(3089/898) Technopoly 2 - Scientism

145) The first and indispensable idea [of "Scientism"] is [...] that the methods of the natural sciences can be applied to the study of human behavior. This idea is the backbone of much of psychology and sociology [...] The term "science," as it is generally used today - referring to the work of those in the physical, chemical, and biological disciplines - was popularized in the early nineteenth century [...] By the early twentieth century, the term had been appropriated by others, and it has become increasingly familiar as a description of what psychologists, sociologists, and even anthropologists do [...] this is a deceptive and confusing use of the term because it blurs the distinction between processes and practices. [...] Using definitions proposed by the British philosopher Michael Oakeshott, we may say that "processes" refers to those events that occur in nature, such as the orbiting of planets or the melting of ice or the production of chlorophyll in a leaf. Such processes have nothing to do with human intelligence, are governed by immutable laws, and are,so to say, determined by the structure of nature [...] By "practices," on the other hand, Oakeshott means the creations of people - those events that result from human decisions and actions, such as writing or reading this book, or forming a new government or conversing at a dinner or falling in love. These events are a function of human intelligence interacting with environment, and although there is surely a measure of regularity in human affairs, such affairs are not determined by natural laws, immutable or otherwise. In other words, there is an irrevocable difference between a blink and a wink. A blink can be classified as a process; it has physiological causes which can be understood and explained within the context of established postulates and theories. But a wink must be classified as a practice, filled with personal and to some extent unknowable meanings and, in any case, quite impossible to explain or predict in terms of causal relations.

What we may call science, then, is the quest to find the immutable and universal laws that govern processes, presuming that there are cause-and-effect relations among these processes. It follows that the quest to understand human behavior and feeling can in no sense except the most trivial be called science. [...] The status of social-science methods is further reduced by the fact that there are almost no experiments that will reveal a social science theory to be false. Theories in social science disappear, apparently, because they are boring, not because they are refuted. But, as Karl Popper has demonstrated, science depends on the requirement that theories must be stated in a way that permits experiments to reveal that they are false. If a theory cannot be tested for its falsity, it is not a scientific theory - as, for example, Freud's theory of the Oedipus complex. Psychiatrists can provide many examples to support the validity of the theory, but they have no answer to the question "What evidence would prove the theory false?" Believers in the God theory (sometimes called Creation Science) are silent on the question "What evidence would show that there is no God?" [...] [S]carcely anyone believes today that Freud was doing science, any more than educated people believe that Marx was doing science, or Max Weber or Lewis Mumford or Bruno Bettelheim or Carl Jung or Margaret Mead or Arnold Toynbee. What these people were doing [...] is documenting the behavior and feelings of people as they confront problems posed by their culture. Their work is a form of storytelling. Science itself is, of course, a form of storytelling too, but its assumptions and procedures are so different from those of social research that it is extremely misleading to give the same name to each. In fact, the stories of social researchers are much closer in structure and purpose to what is called imaginative literature [...] Their interpretations cannot be proved or disproved but will draw their appeal from the power of their language, the depth of their explanations, the relevance of their examples, and the credibility of their themes [...] there is nothing universally and irrevocably true or false about these interpretations. There are no critical tests to confirm or falsify them. There are no natural laws from which they are derived. They are bound by time, by situation, and above all by the cultural prejudices of the researcher or writer [...] Unlike science, social research never discovers anything. It only rediscovers what people were once told and need to be told again [...]

In most [...] respects, social research has little in common with science, and much in common with other forms of imaginative literature. Yet social "scientists" have consistently sought to identify themselves, and in more than name, with physicists, chemists, biologists, and others who inquire into the lawful regularities of the natural world. Why students of the human condition should do this is not hard to explain. The great successes of modern times [...] have come in medicine, pharmacology, biochemistry, astrophysics, and all the feats of mechanical, biological, and electronic engineering, made possible by the consistent application of the aims, assumptions, and procedures of natural science. These successes have attached to the name of science an awesome measure of authority, and to those who claim the title of "scientist" a similar measure of respect and prestige.

Neil Postman
Technopoly (1992)
citing F.H. Hayek
The Counter Revolution of Science:
Studies on the Abuse of Reason (1952)

Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 848 days remaining in the administration of the worst President ever.