Scientism and Values.pdf - Ludwig von Mises Institute

226 Scientism and Values
it. And this assumption thus becomes. a scientific datum of the
social sciences. The circumstance that the data of the social sciences
consist of opinions true and false calls, for a discrete methodology
which, although in many respects kindred to the methodologies
of the natural sciences, must still stand upon its own feet and
stake out its own domain. 3
Social scientists who infer patterns of human conduct from introspection,
.and thus rely upon their own consciousness rather
than on the no less ambiguous appearance of "behavior," are
plainly making use of empirical facts. The progress of modern
economics would have been inconceivable without recourse to introspective
experience. "Anthropomorphism, rightly scorned in
the natural sciences. as prescientific metaphysics, is justified in economics
because economics is about human action." 4 Statistics has
its place in the social sciences as it has in any field of scientific inquiry.
The question here is one of available data and of the susceptibility
of available data to measurement rather than one of
methodology. Obviously, it would be intellectually satisfying if,
for example, political behavior could be measured in such a way
that the causal system of politics could be explained mathematically.
As it is, the statistical tools are powerful, while the available
data are either scarce or dubious. Especially in politics a great
many more data will have to be collected before their accumulated
weight can engage profitably the generous capacity of statistical
mathematics. In this country cooperative research, heavily endowed
with zeal, faith in calculating machines, and tax-free funds,
has produced a vast literature on the regularities and irregularities
of the political animal. But it is doubtful that this earnest effort
has produced deeper insights than, let us say, Parkinson's more
entertaining investigations, which led him to deduce his famous
law. 5 To be sure, given the prevalent preDccupation with datagathering
and grinding the data thus gathered into statistical contrivances,
some progress will be made. But progress in this field
will not render measurable what is nonmetrical, i.e., what by its
very nature is unknowable through numbers.
It can be argued that reliance on behavioral analogies has led to
an alarming atrophy of the powers of introspection. Thus" for ex-