ARNOLD BRECHT'S POLITICAL THEORY REVISITED Political ...

184 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
authority of that end than that the many and continuing
disagreements among scientists about specific causes prove the falsity
or uselessness of the belief in causality. And the fact that the pursuit
of the ultimate metaphysical justification of the end of human
happiness or well-being may lead to the notion of a supreme being or
"unmoved mover" no more discredits the argument and evidence in
support of the reality of that end than does Brecht's implied belief
that the order of nature described by modern science is similarly
traceable to such a supernatural source discredits the scientific account.
Brecht thus fails to make out a sufficiently convincing case that
there is necessarily a significant difference in the degree of
"transmissibility" of "scientific" and "evaluative" knowledge respectively.
He waffles between claims of universality, generality, and
narrower bases of agreement in identifying "scientific knowledge."
And he appears not even to understand the criticism of an un-named
"witty opponent" who reputedly charged that "Scientific Method is
based on the `lowest common denominator"' and who expressed
preference for a science with "the highest possible basis, even though
that be attainable to only a `small elite"' (169). In response, Brecht
addresses himself only to an explicitly hypothetical interpretation of
the criticism as referring to "a morally low level." It is more probable
that what was intended was the fairly obvious problem that if
one insists upon too broad a base of agreement, replication, etc., for
the comfirmation of "findings" as respectably certain or "scientific,"
the danger arises that only that will be respected as "knowledge"
which is "immediately obvious" to idiots, children or others whose
perceptive capacities are relatively limited. That problem is implicit
in Brecht's account of Scientific Method; but he never fully faces up
to it in a consistent fashion. We need only remember the stated
dependency of Scientific Method on "genius" which it cannot itself
supply or supplant, to realize that a failure of "transmission may as
readily result from a defective or insensitive receiver as from a defective
transmitter or garbled or nonsensical message. Thus, of an intended
or self-chosen recipient is insufficiently perceptive and assiduous
to follow an intricate and subtle exposition of the ethical implications
of the natural order, the failure of the "transmission" is a poor
index of the quality of that exposition or of the perceptions which it
embodies. As we have seen above, Brecht does not seem to catch the
full drift of Kant's arguments on the a priori. But Brecht is a man of
extraordinary talents and he evidently devoted himself assiduously