Scientism and Values.pdf - Ludwig von Mises Institute

136 Scientism and Values
between more or less functional, more or less apt to cause friction.
This could bridge the gap between a lost discipline-moral philosophy-and
comparative political science, sociology, and economics.
In saying this, I do not ignore the element of human freedom
and its role in our specific subject matter, human action. True,
there is the (remote) possibility that a labor union hierarchy, after
being called rotten to the core, might pick itself up and become a
bevy of altruistic stewards of power. Obviously, rancid butter will
never respond to the verdict of a chemist.
We touch here a most vexing problem. It has been discussed
under such titles as "private versus public prediction" or "selffulfilling
and self-defeating prophecies." Robert K. Merton, K. R.
Popper, and others have dealt with it. Value judgments as well as
seemingly neutral bodies of data in the social sciences have consequences
within their subject matter, men and groups of men.
Again we have to guard ,against an overstatement of this fact.
It is not an exclusive faculty of human beings. Lower forms of life
also may evade-as if rational-the application of human intellectual
concepts. Certain stocks of germs are known to outwit the
antibiotics researcher by selectively outbreeding his luck with resistant
strains. In other words, it may be as difficult for man to
freeze advantageously his relationship to his nonhuman environment
as it is toward his fellow men. We seem as capable of overreaching
our supply of natural resources (experimenting in the
name of material progress) as we are capable of overextending our
resources of altruism, good will, and patience (experimenting in
the name of social progress). A biologist enthralled by the beauty
of a theory can destroy an ecological equilibrium in nature as
surely as can a sociologist or economist in society.
Almost every time a finding or a hypothesis is. made public by
a student of human action, it leads to an artifact. In this regard
there is little difference in effectiveness (dangerousness) between
the various methods. A bluntly evaluative term can cause as violent
a response as the dry publication of a set of telling figures.
Consequently, limiting ourselves to quantitative behavioral sci-