Scientism and Values.pdf - Ludwig von Mises Institute

xii Introduction
It is a great fault of symbolic pseudomathematical methods of formalizing
a system of economic analysis ... that they expressly assume
strict independence between the factors involved and lose all their
cogency and authority if this hypothesis is disallowed; whereas, in
ordinary discourse, where we are not blindly manipulating but know
all the time what we are doing and what the words mean, we can
keep "at the back of our heads" the necessary reserves and qualifications
and the adjustments which we shall have to make later on, in a
way in which we cannot keep complicated differentials "at the back"
of several pages of algebra which assume that they all vanish. Too
large a proportion of recent "mathematical" economics are mere concoctions,
as imprecise as the initial assumptions they rest on, which
allow the author to lose sight of the complexities and interdependencies
of the real world in a maze of pretentious and unhelpful
symbols.
Adherents of scientism-as far as the study of man is concerned-have
turned the meaning of "science" (Wissenschaft) into
the art of selective "not knowing" and "not noticing." Today's scientistic
bias compels students to know the worthless and keeps
them from searching for the knowledge of worthwhile bodies of
data. 6 In 1953, the student government of Yale University published
its rather harsh "Course Critique," a booklet guiding new
students to worthwhile courses. According to the specific critique
of the course in social psychology, enrolled students seemed to
learn little and became impatient because the professor's methodological
zeal and rigor kept him from imparting knowledge of what
makes human beings really "tick" in soci'al interaction.
We could be amused and simply wait for the eventual passing
of this fad. Yet it is not so comfortable a situation. We probably
know considerably more about social man, about our systems of
social organization, than the fraternity of behavioral scientists and
sociometrists allows us to admit. Many of the theoretical achievements,
as well as the everyday routine work of the natural sciences,
depend on subjective sensory experiences, evaluations, and judgments
of a kind that is strictly outlawed as "unscientific" or
"unscholarly" in the official social sciences of today.
Especially are we forbidden to use simple declarative, and