Scientism and Values.pdf - Ludwig von Mises Institute

108 Scientism and Values
the sponsorship of the Executive Board of this Association, may be
summarized as follows: (1) Science cannot, through the medium of
scientific method, demonstrate the validity or "rightness" of any
particular point of view toward what is "good" for society and personality.
(2) An attempt to do so perforce involves the scientist in
contradictions and pushes him into the peculiar position of elevating
his empirical knowledge to the level of values. (3) Therefore, science,
on the one hand, and value-making, policy-making, and moral-making,
on the other, are incompatible, and the individual must choose which
of these he intends to pursue. (4) They conclude that (a) professionals
as a group had best avoid the field of social pronouncement
and value-supporting and adhere to science (Steward); and (b) the
support of social movements and causes is all right and even advisable,
but let us do so honestly with a frank declaration of our position,
abandoning the attempt to justify our stand scientifically (Barnett) .22
Having thus discarded a reasoned statement of the method,
function, and goals of science, Bennett stated what he considered
the anthropologist's position and warned that science must stand
aside while the position is defended.
. . . In the quarter-century of our discussion of racism a similar contradictory
argument has been used: on the one hand, we have said
that there are no differences between human groups; on the other,
we have specified the scientific possibilities of difference and have
discovered some. Scientifically we know that differences between
human varieties can and do exist; ideologically it serves our purpose to
deny them. We have had our cake and eaten it too, but few anthropologists
would deplore our participation in the racist issue. We
apparently took the course in that particular issue of not daring to
admit the existence of differences, since we felt that a categorical
denial had more social value than a half-admission of difference. 23
(Italics added.)
But it is in his footnote that he drops the seventh veil:
Some of us say that the differences, while present, are unimportant.
We say this, however, with a sinking feeling, since it always throws us
open to the sneer: "See, first you said all races were equal, and now