Even-If: Sufficient, Yet Unnecessary Conditions for Worldmaking

Abstract

The scientific method seeks to identify cause-and-effect relationships using experimentation to test hypotheses through correspondence with an objective reality. Hans Vaihinger explicated the role of as-if logic in how science actually works in practice. Milton Friedman built on Vaihinger’s philosophy to argue the same for economics. Here I offer even-if as the logic for effectuation that in turn forms the basis for the entrepreneurial method. Entrepreneurship seeks not merely to test hypotheses but to co-create hypotheses worth reifying. In doing so, effectual entrepreneurship embodying an even-if logic can work with both possibilistic thinking and a variety of aspects of human imagination.