Some of its parts have been studied for a long time, because this kind of research, in which man could be the main subject, has always presented the greatest interest.
[3]However, the term was used at least once previously (with a slight spelling difference), in 1608, by Clemens Timpler in his Philosophiae practicae systema methodicum: There was Aretology: Following that Praxiology: which is the second part of the Ethics, in general, commenting on the actions of the moral virtues.
[2][5] The modern definition of the word was first given by Alfred V. Espinas (1844–1922),[6] the French philosopher and sociologist; he was the forerunner of the Polish school of the science of efficient action.
[2] It was also used by Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises (1933), Russian Marxist Nikolai Bukharin (1888–1938) during the Second International Congress of History of Science and Technology in London (in 1931), and Polish scholar Oscar Lange (1904–1965) in 1959, and later.
[2] A revival of Espinas's approach in France was revealed in the works of Pierre Massé (1946), the cybernetician, Georges Théodule Guilbaud (1953), the Belgian logician, Leo Apostel (1957), the cybernetician, Anatol Rapoport (1962), Henry Pierron, psychologist and lexicographer (1957), François Perroux, economist (1957), the social psychologist, Robert Daval (1963), the well-known sociologist, Raymond Aron (1963) and the methodologists, Abraham Antoine Moles and Roland Caude (1965).
[2] It published hundreds of papers by different authors, and the materials for a special vocabulary edited by Professor Tadeusz Pszczolowski, the leading praxeologist of the younger generation.
[2] A sweeping survey of the praxeological approach is to be found in the paper by the French statistician Micheline Petruszewycz, "A propos de la praxéologie".
[11]: 394 Bunge, who was also a fierce critic of pseudoscience, warned that when "conceived in extremely general terms and detached from both ethics and science, praxiology has hardly any practical value".