Scientism and Values (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from Scientism and ValuesOver a number of years participants in this symposium, and others, have Shown, in their individual publications, increasing concern with the harm done to the true study of man, especially as a social being, by a form of scientism that takes various disguises of strict scientificalness. It is not merely neopositivism, which, by the way, has been criticized by a number of able men, it is also more than a cult of quantification. Scientism implies a cynical world View - in the original meaning of the word: it is a doglike View of man, or shall we say ratlike? Man is best understood, so the scientistic expert holds, when seen from the level of a rodent eager to learn the ins and outs of a maze. He can be conditioned to put up with almost anything the few wise designers of the maze have mapped out for him.And yet a critical attitude toward scientism is not to be con fused with an antievolutionary position. On the contrary, we see scientistic sociologists and anthropologists refuse to learn from research on animals because it might challenge their creed of em vironmental determinism. As A. L. Kroeber observed not long ago, 3 many of his colleagues in America are studiedly ignorant of the work of the ethologists, including such renowned men as Karl von Frisch and Konrad Lorenz, who explore species-specific innate behavior patterns.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.