BOOK REVIEW
The Counter-Revolution of Science: Studies on the Abuse of Reason, by F.A. Hayek (Liberty Press, 7440 Shadeland, Indianapolis, Indiana, 46250), 1979.
In this volume, Nobel Prize Laureate F.A. Hayek presents an analysis of some of the chief doctrines of contemporary social science. He states "The essays assembled in this volume were written as part of a greater work that, if it should ever be finished, pursues the history of the abuse and decline of reason in modern times."
Part One: Scientism and the Study of Society deals with attempts to apply the methods of the natural sciences to the social sciences. These attempts, called objectivism, collectivism, and historicism refer to society as a "whole" or a mass having objective characteristics and moving in a definable direction as a result of "scientific'' laws governing or determining human behavior.
Hayek refers to these attempts as being "scientistic" rather than scientific, because the methods used in the study of chemical and physical objects cannot be useful in the study of human action. Any discussion of human behavior must start with how individuals perceive things rather than the way natural science views them. As such, social science is subjective, the study of individuals acting together, in various individual ways. "Neither a 'commodity' or an 'economic good' or 'food' or 'money' can be defined in physical terms but only in terms of views people hold about things.''
According to Hayek, the central problem of the social sciences is to determine "how it is possible that institutions which serve the common welfare and are most important for its advancement can arise without a common will aiming at their creation."
Scientism is irritated by this problem because it means that a single individual or group of individuals cannot direct society as well as, or better than the individuals who make up that society. Society is not entirely the product of conscious reason or human design.
Hayek shows great insight into human action with the following:
"It may indeed prove to be far the most difficult and not the least important task for human reason rationally to comprehend its own limitation. It is essential for the growth of reason that as individuals we should bow to forces and obey principles which we cannot hope fully to understand, yet on which the advance and even the preservation of civilization depend. Historically this has been achieved by the influence of the various religious creeds and by tradition and superstition which made men submit to those forces by an appeal to his emotion rather than to his reason. The most dangerous stage in the growth of civilization may well be that in which man has come to regard all these beliefs as superstition and refuses to accept or to submit to anything which he does not rationally understand.''
Hayek concludes Part One of his essay with: "There is no conflict between our conclusions and those of legitimate science. The main lesson at which we have arrived is indeed the same as that which one of the acutest students of scientific method has drawn from a survey of all fields of knowledge." Hayek then goes on to quote M.R. Cohen from his work Reason and Nature stating that: "the great lesson of humility which science tenches us, that we can never be omnipotent or omniscient, is the same as that of all great religions: man is not and never will be the god before whom he must bow down."
Part Two: The Counter-Revolution of Science is the history of the ideas analyzed in Part One, and the sponsors of those ideas.
A French school, L'École Polytechnique, and three men, Saint-Simon, Comte, and Enfantin, spawned by the French Revolution, laid the basis of modern socialism and positivism, which Hayek calls scientism.
L'École Polylechnique consisted of a body of professional scientists and engineers which grew up in Paris and which embodied the revolutionary spirit of that age.
Saint-Simon disliked the principles of liberty because they interfered with the organization of society for a common purpose and with the establishment of a spiritual power which could set national goals. The philosophy that studies the march of civilization and positive scientists who are able to base scientific policy on coordinated series of historical facts are to provide the spiritual power, according to Saint-Simon.
Comte envisioned a new science, social physics, which is the study of the collective development of the human race. ''The object of social physics is to discover the natural and unavoidable laws of the progress of civilization which are as necessary as that of gravitation." Comte's ideas were described by J.S. Mill as "the completest system of spiritual and temporal despotism which ever yet emanated from a human brain."
Enfantin developed and spread the ideas of Saint-Simon through various publications and journals.
The doctrines of Saint-Simon, Comte, and Enfantin are in effect in the social sciences to this day. The idea "that the human mind can, as it were, lift itself up by its own bootstraps, has remained a dominant characteristic of most sociology to the present day, and we have here the root (or rather one of the roots, the other being Hegel) of that modern hubris which has found its most perfect expression in the so-called sociology of knowledge. This idea - the human mind controlling its own development has from its beginning been one of the leading ideas of sociology . . .''
Part Three, titled Comte and Hegel, shows the commonality of their thinking. Both men would agree that "the central aim of all study of society must be to construct a universal history of all mankind, understood as a scheme of the necessary development of humanity according to recognizable laws. ''They both claim, in other words, that our individual minds, which contribute to this process of development, are at the same time capable of comprehending it as a whole. It is the necessary succession of stages of the human mind determined by these dynamic laws which accounts for a corresponding succession of different civilizations, cultures, Voltspeister or social systems.''
Hayek points out that Darwin did little more than confirm an already existing tendency, a tendency developed under the influence of Hegel and Comte.
The philosophy of Hegel and Comte was accepted by Feuerbach and Marx which, in turn, produced the totalitarianism of the twentieth century. Hayek's Counter-Revolution of Science. Studies on the Abuse of Reason shows that the thinking of the 19th century has become imbedded in the pre-suppositions of 20th century reason. As such, this newly re-issued book is highly recommended reading for all interested in social science theory today.
Reviewed by Ralph C. Lohrengel
V Hegel (engraving by Bollinger, based on Xeller's portrait).
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