Introduction

Abstract

The distinguishing property of man as opposed to animals is the ability to choose on the basis of rational thought. The challenge and the necessity of choice are ubiquitous as it enters virtually all aspects of life ranging from the choice of consumption, and the decision of how to spend time on labor or leisure in individuals to the choices, which make a production plan, and to the act of choice in designing and operating technological equipment. All these acts of choice have in common, that on the basis of resources and knowledge available in the present, means of control are used to influence something in the future in a way that is favored. In other words, choice implies change, so that decision making almost naturally takes on the property of being ’dynamic’.¹

Machlup in his attempt to assess the true meaning of the term’ dynamics’ quotes one rather extreme opinion: “Explanation of change; hence, the only useful theory (‘There is no meaningful statics’)” (see Machlup, 1963, p. 33).