Scientism and Values.pdf - Ludwig von Mises Institute

238 Scientism and Values
pretation of personality. As M. Brewster Smith has authoritatively
written,4
Modern psychology, historical or otherwise, is in fact overwhelmingly
functional. The dominant strain is oriented toward a model of the
organism as a self-regulating system and falls naturally into the use
of terms like homeostasis, equilibrium and adjustment; while the
marginal influence of Gestalt theory leads to parallel emphasis on the
field determination of phenomenal properties or behavior tendencies.
Formerly, when the emphasis had been on habits, traits, change,
and action, only the historical approach would do. Today, according
to Smith, it is fruitful to transcend specific histories, to lay
bare a scheme defining the individual's nonhistorical, extemporaneous
behavioral dispositions. Such a scheme-one claimed not
merely for a strain of psychology-will be a perfect accounting
system. It will fully take care of all contingencies, clearly showing
that perception of miracle, novelty, or accident must be a symptom
of faulty vision or a function of an uncontrolled body of impulses.
It is backed by the notion that everything scientifically significant
is attached, determined, and at hand. Though much meaningful
data may remain hidden until duly approached, all of it is emphatically
present, more or less deeply embedded in the present
state of man's development. Through the proper method it might
be made to yield truthful correlations-eorrelationsl which have
held in the past as they must surely hold in the future. The real
can thus be forced to disclose itself as the ideal while, simultaneously,
the ideal can be forced to disclose itself as the real.
II
Of course, social scientists are not conspiring to found a state
which, however unrealized, they believe to be woven into the nature
of things. To borrow a phrase from American public law,
they are merely engaged in parallel action. They labor as if set to
actualize a holistic system of elementary relations. And they rest
whenever their approach dissolves the peculiarities they encounter,