Murray Rothbard on Richard Cantillon and methodology

[Richard] Cantillon was one of the first to use such unique tools of economic abstraction as what Ludwig von Mises would later identify as the indispensable method of economic reasoning: the Gedanken-experiment (or thought-experiment).

~ Murray Rothbard, An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, Vol. I, Chapter 12, "The founding father of modern economics: Richard Cantillon," p. 348