Scientism and Values.pdf - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Science and the Studies of Man 59
agree with you, or I would have to cite other actions of T'om
which, I would assert, override your judgment. This is to say that
when we discern value, we point to it, and when someone else does
not discern it where we point, we give the physical features to
which, as I am wont to put it, value is "anchored."
It should be noted, however, that value is not identical with the
physical traits to which it is anchored. And the reason for this is
that two men can agree thoroughly on the physical traits of an
object and disagree on its value. I doubt whether D. H. Lawrence
and Hemingway would have disagreed about what actually goes
on in a bullfight: what the picador and torero and the horse and
the bull did, how they behaved. But we know how deeply these
two writers disagree about the moral and aesthetic values of bullfighting.
It is true that the physicist also starts with objects and events of
ordinary experience, which is to say, with observations that can
be made either with the naked senses or with instruments that are
extensions of these. In this respect he cannot be said to differ from
the student of man. But sooner or later he finds ways of going
beyond the initially observable data and of correlating his subject
matter with scales and other instruments of measurement. How he
does this beyond elementary physics I do not exactly know except
in the vaguest way. But that he does it I believe I know. It is
necessary to bear this in mind, for it points to the difference be..
tween the objectivity of the scientist and that which the student
of man can achieve. Scientific data, even when not quantifiable,
are thoroughly public, are objective in the sense that there need
be no question concerning their presence within the purview of
observation. The values observed by the student of man cannot be
freed from inherent vagueness. When we speak of the Apollonian
character of a !=ulture, we cannot be certain that all of us are
talking about the same thing--even if, after reading Miss Benedict,
we backtrack and read Nietzsche also. ll
These considerations are not intended to deny that there are
cases in which value can be correlated with objective, value-free
data--money or work done or some other physical event or feature
of things objectively observable--but the limitations of such cor-