Scientism and Values.pdf - Ludwig von Mises Institute

254 Scientism and Values
Science, however, cannot sanction every procedure which a society
might employ: som.e of them will not aid the realization of ends.
The proper procedures, the only ones which guarantee the successful
operation and the effective functioning of society, are those
which reject the possibility that a value-impregnated expression
of an individual may conceivably be true independently of his
interests. In accordance with its commitment to a phenomenal
reality-and its. attendant discrimination against other realms of
reality-science must reduce, or repudiate as myth, the belief
that ends may be ontological, that values may transcend individual
desires. It therefore recognizes (1) that the end for man is
quite literally his end-his death, and (2) that the end for science
is the assuring of survival, the maintaining of the social and
individual equilibrium. Hence, the purpose of science is to keep
everything endlessly moving. Its credentials are furnished by its
power to make society survive; and as society is in fact kept forever
on the move-without hitches, deviations, or back talk-its
credentials are authenticated.
5. A driv'e to fuss ever more intimately with the individual
person so that social science may achieve its end. Having discovered
that at the core of man·is an abhorrible void, unfulfilled
but crying for fulfillment, social scientists are likely to work on
that state toward which man's true will aspires. Such work effects
a transformation within man himself. Karl Mannheim has elaborated
on this:
Functionalism made its first appearance in the field ,of the natural
sciences, and could be described as the technical point of view. It
has only recently been transferred t.o the social sphere.. '..
Once this technical approach was transferred' from the natural
sciences to human affairs, it was bound to bring about a profound
change in man himself.... The functional approach no longer
regards ideas and moral standards as absolute values, but as products
of the social process which can, if necessary, be changed by scientific
guidance combined with political practice....
The extension of this doctrine of technical supremacy which I have
advocated in this book as one of several approaches to society is in
my opinion inevitable. . . .