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STUDIES ON THE ABUSE AND DECLINE OF REASON

The University of Chicago Press

Contents

Editorial Foreword...........................................................................ixIntroduction.................................................................................1Prelude Individualism: True and False........................................................46One The Influence of the Natural Sciences on the Social Sciences.............................77Two The Problem and the Method of the Natural Sciences.......................................81Three The Subjective Character of the Data of the Social Sciences............................88Four The Individualist and 'Compositive' Method of the Social Sciences.......................99Five The Objectivism of the Scientistic Approach.............................................108Six The Collectivism of the Scientistic Approach.............................................117Seven The Historicism of the Scientistic Approach............................................126Eight 'Purposive' Social Formations..........................................................142Nine 'Conscious' Direction and the Growth of Reason..........................................149Ten Engineers and Planners...................................................................156Eleven The Source of the Scientistic Hubris: L'Ecole Polytechnique...........................169Twelve The "Accoucheur d'Idées": Henri de Saint-Simon...................................187Thirteen Social Physics: Saint-Simon and Comte...............................................201Fourteen The Religion of the Engineers: Enfantin and the Saint-Simonians.....................217Fifteen Saint-Simonian Influence.............................................................235Sixteen Sociology: Comte and His Successors..................................................256Seventeen Comte and Hegel....................................................................285Some Notes on Propaganda in Germany (1939)...................................................305Selected Correspondence, F. A. Hayek to Fritz Machlup (1940–41)........................312Preface to the U. S. Edition (1952)..........................................................321Preface to the German Edition (1959).........................................................322Acknowledgments..............................................................................325Index........................................................................................327

Chapter One

In the course of its slow development in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the study of economic and social phenomena was guided in the choice of its methods in the main by the nature of the problems it had to face. It gradually developed a technique appropriate to these problems without much reflection on the character of the methods or on their relation to that of other disciplines of knowledge. Students of political economy could describe it alternatively as a branch of science or of moral or social philosophy without the least qualms whether their subject was scientific or philosophical. The term science had not yet assumed the special narrow meaning it has today, nor was there any distinction made which singled out the physical or natural sciences and attributed to them a special dignity. Those who devoted themselves to those fields indeed readily chose the designation of philosophy when they were concerned with the more general aspects of their problems, and occasionally we even find 'natural philosophy' contrasted with 'moral science'.

During the first half of the nineteenth century a new attitude made its appearance. The term 'science' came more and more to be confined to the physical and biological disciplines which at the same time began to claim for themselves a special rigorousness and certainty which distinguished them from all others. Their success was such that they soon came to exercise an extraordinary fascination on those working in other fields, who rapidly began to imitate their teaching and vocabulary. Thus the tyranny commenced which the methods and technique of the Sciences in the narrow sense of the term have ever since exercised over the other subjects. These became increasingly concerned to vindicate their equal status by showing that their methods were the same as those of their brilliantly successful sisters rather than by adapting their methods more and more to their own particular problems. And, although in the 120 years or so, during which this ambition to imitate Science in its methods rather than its spirit has now dominated social studies, it has contributed scarcely anything to our understanding of social phenomena, not only does it continue to confuse and discredit the work of the social disciplines, but demands for further attempts in this direction are still presented to us as the latest revolutionary innovations which, if adopted, will secure rapid undreamed of progress.

Let it be said at once, however, that those who were loudest in these demands were rarely themselves men who had noticeably enriched our knowledge of the Sciences. From Francis Bacon, the lord chancellor, who will forever remain the prototype of the 'demagogue of science', as he has justly been called, to Auguste Comte and the 'physicalists' of our own day, the claims for the exclusive virtues of the specific methods employed by the natural sciences were mostly advanced by men whose right to speak on behalf of the scientists was not above suspicion, and who indeed in many cases had shown in the Sciences themselves as much bigoted prejudice as in their attitude to other subjects. Just as Francis Bacon opposed Copernican astronomy, and as Comte taught that any too minute investigation of the phenomena by such instruments as the microscope was harmful and should be suppressed by the spiritual power of the positive society, because it tended to upset the laws of positive science, so this dogmatic attitude has so often misled men of this type in their own field that there should have been little reason to pay too much deference to their views about problems still more distant from the fields from which they derived their inspiration.

There is yet another qualification which the reader ought to keep in mind throughout the following discussion. The methods which scientists or men fascinated by the natural sciences have so often tried to force upon the social sciences were not always necessarily those which the scientists in fact followed in their own field, but rather those which they believed that they employed. This is not necessarily the same thing. The scientist reflecting and theorising about his procedure is not always a reliable guide. The views about the character of the method of Science have undergone various fashions during the last few generations, while we must assume that the methods actually followed have remained essentially the same. But since it was what scientists believed that they did, and even the views which they had held some time before, which have influenced the social sciences, the following comments on the methods of the natural sciences also do not necessarily claim to be a true account of what the scientists in fact do, but an account of the views on the nature of scientific method which were dominant in recent...