Scientism and Values.pdf - Ludwig von Mises Institute

242 Scientism and Values
Whether the social scientist intuits universals-assuming the risks
of Burckhardt, Spengler, Weber, and Benedict-or determines,
more empirically, just what to do in order to ensure a system's
perpetuity,IO he is directed to engage in patterning deviant elements,
and this all the more energetically as he identifies knowl·
edge with the realization of an immanent "true state of affairs,"
with what would spontaneously occur in the social world were all
impediments removed.
As long as this approach remained purely formal and analytical,
as it did in the relativistic, comparative analyses of Burckhardt and
Weber, it also left unsettled just what the specific impedim,ents to
the ideal might be. Hence, discussion about them was not fore·
closed. But the abridgement of discussion is, fostered as a substan·
tive definition of a disequilibrium is implied. It would be more
tedious than difficult to show how massively this is the case, with
what readiness undesirable deviants, are actually being identified:
they are widely seen as the conflicts and displacements which have
flowered thanks to modern man's complex industrial society. Only
a deeply prejudiced person, it is made to appear, will fail to discern
that whatever man's twentieth-century opportunities and
goods, the present is a painful era of community disruption, com·
plicated politics, and endless factional crises. If this offered diagnosis
is far too broad, it is believed to cover so many contemporary
relationships that the application of social skills, of knowledge
about human relations, becom,es imperative indeed. And this
knowledge, at its best, is seen as th,e product of social science.
There being no question regarding what substantively consti·
tutes social delinquencies-the nature of the pathological being
virtually self-evident ll-social science may rightly apply its knowledge
and its methods, working to discover how individuals might
be moved with speed and efficiency toward the common, healthy
goal. It becomes credible to argue that psychologists should
seek to provide a basic science of human thinking, character, skill
learning, motives, conduct, etc., which will serve all the sciences of
man (e.g., anthropology, sociology, economics, government, education,