Scientism and Values.pdf - Ludwig von Mises Institute

32 Scientism and Values
tom," Miss Benedict tells us on page 3, "can be profitable only
after certain preliminary propositions have been accepted, and
some of these propositions have been violently opposed. In the first
place any scientific study requires that there be no preferential
weighting of one or another of the items it selects for its consideration."
This is the same principle of objectivity again. It is repeated
at least a half dozen times in the first chapter, and, in our
opinion, it deserves emphasis; but again, we have to ask, does Miss
Benedict know what she is saying when she says this? Does she
really mean that the anthropologist ought always to proceed in
such a manner that he cannot see and condemn the evils in societies
such as Hitler's National Socialism or Stalin's or Khrushchev's
Communism? Does· she really mean to advocate no "preferential
weighting" against such things in societies as concentration camps?
If she does, then so far as we are concerned, she is using something
labelled anthropology to cultivate something worse than
barbarism. If she does not mean this, how do we explain what she
says, and the fact that she says it over and over?
It happens that we are convinced that objectivity as fairness and
impartiality is essential to the proper development of social science,
but we doubt whether our words, or the word "objectivity,"
or such sentences as those that Miss Benedict utters in its place,
have any magical powers. Resolutions and ritual observances involving
the repetition of formulas that are not clearly understood
seem highly inappropriate to the sciences. But perhaps we are
wrong and Miss Benedict does somewhere elaborate on the meaning
of this principle to which she appeals, or perhaps some other
social scientist has done so; but we have searched and we have not
found any anywhere. We have found plenty of statements such as
those Miss Benedict utters, and all of them are virtual equivalents
of the definition given in Fairchild's Dictionary of Sociology that
objectivity 'is "The ability to detach oneself from situations in
which one is personally involved, and to view the facts on the
basis of evidence and reason rather than prejudice and emotion,
without bias or preconception, in their true setting."
It is evident, if we examine this definition, that objectivity contains
some problems. One of these is the meanings of words in the