By training, Schumpeter was as Austrian as possible. He earned his doctorate under Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk at the University of Vienna. However, he is not particularly associated with the Austrian School as it has developed as a distinct school of thought. He perhaps deserves partial responsibility for the popular notion among economists that the insights of Menger et al. were included in the neoclassical synthesis which became dominant in Europe and the US during the early 20th century. Mises accepted this idea early in his career, but later came to believe that the Austrian insights had not been adequately appreciated.
The Austrians have a point about the absurdity of making everything in economics purely empirical. But they fail to realise that what is a priori is also conjectural and that some of their assumptions are clearly more like almost-universally-true generalities rather than a priori.
A priori truths are supposed to be true independently of any empirical matters; they are often (always?) about universal truths. What is universally true could also be an empirically testable conjecture. That "man acts" is not a priori true.
By training, Schumpeter was as Austrian as possible. He earned his doctorate under Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk at the University of Vienna. However, he is not particularly associated with the Austrian School as it has developed as a distinct school of thought. He perhaps deserves partial responsibility for the popular notion among economists that the insights of Menger et al. were included in the neoclassical synthesis which became dominant in Europe and the US during the early 20th century. Mises accepted this idea early in his career, but later came to believe that the Austrian insights had not been adequately appreciated.
The Austrians have a point about the absurdity of making everything in economics purely empirical. But they fail to realise that what is a priori is also conjectural and that some of their assumptions are clearly more like almost-universally-true generalities rather than a priori.
How does apriori differ from universally true?
A priori truths are supposed to be true independently of any empirical matters; they are often (always?) about universal truths. What is universally true could also be an empirically testable conjecture. That "man acts" is not a priori true.