Science cannot significantly help us to ascertain all . . .

From F.A. Hayek quoted in The Market and Other Orders edited by Bruce Caldwell.

Science can help us to a better theoretical understanding of the interconnections [that form a complex economy]. But science cannot significantly help us to ascertain all the widely dispersed and rapidly fluctuating particular circumstances of time and place which determine the order of a great complex society.

The delusion that advancing theoretical knowledge places us everywhere increasingly in a position to reduce complex inter-connections to ascertainable particular facts often leads to new scientific errors.