Scientism and Values.pdf - Ludwig von Mises Institute

38 Scientism and Values
numerous; but the most frequent procedure is either to use the
term "objectivity" or equivalents to invoke the thing that is
wanted. The assertion is never made in so many words that the
social scientist can call spirits from the vasty deep who will see to
it that his procedure is fair and impartial, but the pretension is
there nevertheless; and no one asks seriously, will they come merely
because they are called? The best discussion of the problem that
is available is probably Max Weber's, but it seems not to have
occurred to Weber or any of his followers that social science is no
better equipped to take value into account than it is to drop it
out, that it is necessary to know what value is before you can do
either, that the great achievement of economic theory lies precisely
in its leaving the question of value to wholly subjective processes.
Weber says that "all evaluative ideas are subjective." 15 "It is
simply naive to believe," he says, "although there are many specialists
who even now do, that it is possible to establish and demonstrate
as scientifically valid 'a principle' for practical social science
from which the norms for the solution of practical problems can
be unambiguously derived." 16 That Weber went far toward recognizing
the difficulty of the problem is clear. "The possible," he
said, "is often reached only by striving to attain the impossible
that lies beyond it." 17 He was obviously searching for a combination
of empiricism and theory, and we 'cannot escape the conviction
that he was right in doing so. "The earliest intentionally
rational therapy," he said,
involved the almost complete rejection of the cure of empirical symptoms
by empirically tested herbs and potions in favor of the exorcism
of (what was thought to be) the "real" (magical, daemonic) cause
of the ailment. Formally, it had exactly the same higWy rational
structure as many of the most important developments in modern
theory. But we do not look on these priestly magical therapies as
progress . . .1 8
And so Weber advises the social scientist to recognize that in
dealing with social problems he cannot escape the problem of
value, that he cannot know what he is doing unless he recognizes