Scientism and Values.pdf - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Objectivity and Social Science 39
values and deliberately and openly gives them place in theoretical
systems or ideal .types which he can then use somewhat as the
physical scientist uses his mathematical formulas. But just how the
social scientist can take into account something that he is unable
to show in existence, Weber does not say. Yet what he does say,
and he says it clearly (if in accepting implications we d not strain
at gnats while we swallow camels), is. that the social scientist has
no basis for his science but beliefs; and Weber's theory thus. has
the highly significant consequence of making social science a
function of belief.
It is not possible in a necessarily brief discussion to dispose of
all the puerile arguments on the subject of objectivity as fairness
and impartiality, but we ought not to overlook the prescription,
so blandly and so often given, that all we have to do is guide ourselves
by the relevant facts and logically sound inferences, from
facts. If this were as easy to do as it is to say, Miss Benedict would
not have made the elem.entary logical blunders that we have
shown she did make in her Patterns of Culture) and if it were easy
to recognize these hIunders social science would long ago have
become a more rational discipline. The failures of social science
are human failures. Let us now consider whether our understanding
of what a fact is, is any better than our understanding of the
first principle in logic.
v
It would be possible to interpret the case of Antigone as that
of an overwrought young woman whose "higher law" was a mere
projection of her fantasy and who, because she lacked the advice
of the modern psychoanalyst or psychiatrist, did not know any
better than to risk her life in an unne