Scientism and Values.pdf - Ludwig von Mises Institute

154 Scientism and Values
that I have rarely seen a more arbitrary juggling with the facts of
history."
Toynbee, the prophet of a world one in the love of God, provides
a· classic example of systematic scientism. This is what I had
said about him a few years earlier: 12
The worst of Toynbee's great attempt is that he has, presented it
under the patronage of a scientific terminology. A patently aprioristically-conceived,
Augustinian-Spenglerian scheme of the history of
mankind he wants to pass off as the product of the empirical method,
built up out of what he calls facts, without troubling to analyze their
precise nature or test their reliability for the purposes of system construction.
When, in a radio debate with him in January, 1948, I
remarked upon the bewildering multiplicity as well as, baffling intangibility
of historical data, he asked: "Is history really too hard a
nut for science to crack?" and added: "The human intellect, sighs
Geyl, 'is not sufficiently comprehensive.' " Of course I had not sighed;
why should I sigh about what I regard as one of the fundamental
truths of life? But Toynbee's rejoinder was: "We can't afford such
defeatism; it is unworthy of the greatness of man's mind." In short,
he belongs to those who obstinately blind themselves to the limitations
of our comprehension of history.
In all my various essays devoted to A Study of History I have
attempted to show the insufficiency, or the complete irrelevance,
of Toynbee's pretended scientific arguments, formulations, and
conclusions. Here, for instance, is a passage in which I derided his
portentous use of the word "laws." In arguing that civilizations
thrjve on challenges, he admits that sometimes challenges are so
severe as to be deadly. The growth of civilization, therefore, is best
served by the "Golden Mean." Or, "in scientific terminology,"
what is needed is "a mean between a deficiency of severity and an
excess of it." Now follows my comm.ent: 13
So here we have a "law," scientifically established, or at least scientifically
formulated. But what next? When we try to apply it, we shall
first of all discover that in every given historical situation it refers to
only one element, out of many, one which, when we are concerned