Scientism and Values.pdf - Ludwig von Mises Institute

190 Scientism and Values
istics. The same can be said for other environmental factors. Thus,
at the biological level the "design" present at the start of growth
has before it in time a huge number of possible designs. There is
no such thing as an optimum nurture. Dozens, possibly thousands,
of different combinations of environmental factors may supply the
conditions for achieving a single kind of optimum or a number
of different optima simultaneously. Many kinds of optima are
known, and probably many are yet to be discovered. Therefore,
for an individual of any species, I hesitate to speak of "optimum
nurture" and of "design" for growth without a careful qualific.ation
of "optimum" and of "nurture."
Since mental growth stems from, but greatly supersedes, the
complexities of biological growth, the term "design" should be
discarded in talking of the growth of children, especially when
presented against a background of growth curves. So presented,
it may be even more readily misused than were I.Q. scores in their
day (18, 20). Som.e term which conveys the idea of the plural
potentialities of children should be coined before the textbooks
of education take up such statements as the following: "Every
child progresses toward a specific maximum." "Each child is apparently
born with potentialities for growing according to a specific
design" (8). The "design" as seen in growth graphs is ex post
facto and should never be taken to represent what was fixed there
before the design was recorded.
Going Togetherness) Variation) Center of Gravity of Growth)
and Readiness. The literature at hand (6, 7, 8, 12, 13, 16) contains
graphs of sets of growth age curves for a total of twenty children.
Each child's record is a pattern unto himself. In one paper (16)
four graphs are chosen to illustrate a "going togetherness" of all
growth attributes in each child. These four graphs do illustrate
this, and the author says that based upon other graphs of fifty-six
boys and girls (which he does not show) "... one secures a most
dramatic picture of the generalization that growth tends towards
unified patterns."
But among the twenty growth graphs shown in the six publications,
only eleven show "trends toward unified patterns"; nine