Scientism and Values.pdf - Ludwig von Mises Institute

34 Scientism and Values
III
Let us resume our examination of Miss Benedict as scientist.
On page 9 Miss Benedict tells the reader that "A. very little acquaintance
with other conventions, and a knowledge of how various
these may be, would do much to promote a rational social
order." Notice how in this statement on page 9 "a very little acquaintance"
is all that is necessary to take care of the argument
for social causation introduced on page 2 with the statem.ent that
"no man ever looks at the world with pristine eyes." However, let
this pass, and let us say immediately that we too are interested in
the idea of a "rational social order," but by this time we are beginning
to wonder whether we are supposed to accept these words as
words of magic and to assume that if we repeat them often enough
they will bring us what we want.
The effort to discover what a "rational social order" would be
did not start with modern social science. It is, in our view, anything
but evidence of rationality in social science that it should
be necessary to elaborate on this question. Miss Benedict could
have learned from many easily available sources that the question
of a rational social order is ancient. Let us take one of the many
possible early sources, the play A ntigone by Sophocles, and show
how it poses the problem that Miss Benedict seems to think is
solved by three words. Here is an abbreviated outline of the play:
Antigone's brothers, Eteocles and Polyneices, have killed each
other in a battle before the gates of Thebes. Polyneices had invaded
his homeland with an armed force. Creon, after the death
of Eteocles and Polyneices, was next in succession to the kingship
and his first action as king was to issue a proclamation:
Eteocles, who died as a man should die, fighting for his country, is
to be buried with full military honors, with all the ceremony that is
usual when the greatest heroes die; but his brother Polyneices, who
broke his exile to come back with fire and sword against his native
city and the shrines of his fathers' gods, whose one idea was to spill
the blood of his blood and sell his own people into slavery-Poly-