Scientism and Values.pdf - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Objectivity and Social Science 45
to be said that if the social scientist does not know better in regard
to questions that involve his science, as this question does, then his
science is a snare and a delusion.
Secondly, we shall docum,ent the statement that the social scientist
in talking about justice not only does not know what he is
talking about, but is stirring up and adding to destuctive conflict.
"Every society," says, Maclver,28 "is held together by a myth system,
a complex of dominating thought-forms that determines and
sustains all its activities. All social relations, the very texture of
human society, are myth-born and myth-sustained.... When we
speak here of myth," he says,
we imply nothing concerning the grounds of belief, so far as belief
claims to interpret reality. We use the word in an entirely neutral
sense. Whether its content be revelation or superstition, insight or
prejudice, is not here in question. We need a term that abjures all
reference to truth or falsity.
It follows that every society to preserve itself has to preserve its
myth. MacIver eliminates the only possibility of mediation between
myths when he says that in using the term "myth" he "abjures
all reference to truth or falsity." Under these conditions, the
role of the social scientist is necessarily limited to that of supporting
and strengthening the myth of the society to which he belongs.
The fact that MacIver devotes much of his writing to searching
for a basis for mediation between the myths of different societies
does not alter the fact that he himself specifies conditions that
eliminate the only possible basis for such mediation.
MacIver's case is particularly instructive because his work is far
superior to most work in the social sciences. If he makes his own
way to the bog of subjectivity and falls in and stays in and does
not know where he is, it cannot reasonably be expected that other
and lesser minds can do better.
We now come to the second of our social scientists that we have
picked for illustrative purposes. We shall now take a brief look
at Gunnar Myrdal and his American Dilemma. First, let us observe
that this work would not have been written without the