THE LIMITATIONS OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN ECONOMICS by FRANK HYNEMAN KNIGHT 1. The Meaning of Science 229 2. The Technique of Prediction, or the Logic of Science 3. The Scientific Treatment of Human Data 233 240 4. Economics as a Science 256 THE LIMITATIONS OF SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN ECONOMICS 1. THE MEANING OF SCIENCE Since economics deals with human beings, the problem of its scientific treatment involves fundamental problems of the relations between man and his world. From a rational or scientific point of view, all practically real problems are problems in economics. The problem of life is to utilize resources "economically," to make them go as far as possible in the production of desired results. The general theory of economics is therefore simply the rationale of life.In so far as it has any rationale! The first question in regard to scientific economics is this question of how far life is rational, how far its problems reduce to the form of using given means to achieve given ends. Now this, we shall contend, is not very far; the scientific view of life is a limited and partial view; life is at bottom an exploration in the field of values, an attempt to discover values, rather than on the basis of knowledge of them to produce and enjoy them to the greatest possible extent. (We strive to "know ourselves," to find out our real wants, more than to get what we want.) This fact sets a first and most sweeping limitation to the conception of economics as a science. Even this statement of the scientific view of life as the conscious utilization of resources for given ends involves stretching the term scientific as compared with its most exact signification. It involves conceding the reality and potency of conscious thinking and planning, which in the narrowest meaning of science are illusory. From a rigorously scientific viewpoint, life is a mere matter of mechanics; what human beings think of as practical problems of conduct are subjective illusions; thinking and planning and all subjectivity are illusions; human actions are a detail in a cosmic panorama of the transformation of motion. But since it is impossible to discuss value in purely objective terms, we must simply assume the reality of the conscious data and leave it to philosophy to reconcile the contradiction, or to decide that it cannot be reconciled. We have to accept the common-sense notion of value or worth as our starting point. Two sorts of experience are recognized as having worth, or as capable of having it, an active and a passive; one is creation or control, and the other appreciation. These are not strictly separate experiences, but rather "aspects" of experience, yet they are practically separable to a large degree. The worth of active creation or control is a kind of appreciation; usually, the worth of the experience of activity depends more or less upon a feeling of worth toward or appreciation of some "result" brought about. But though the two things are usually more or less associated and overlapping, we are all familiar with extreme cases in which on the one hand the feeling of worth is nearly or quite purely passive and on the other the worth of an activity is nearly or quite independent of the character of the result. The literature of value, like that of science, shows a bias for monism, so there is a tendency to reduce all value to "contemplation" or to the "joy of being a cause," according to the temperamental predilections of the particular writer, but a candid observer must accept both, and all sorts of mixtures of the two. Each of these fundamental categories also exhibits two sub-types. In the case of appreciation we distinguish an affective or emotional or esthetic, and a cognitive or intellectual pleasure. The mixtures and interrelations of these are again complex, but again we do separate, more or less, a worth which is pure appreciation from a worth which is a matter of "understanding." We do care to understand things which we feel to be repulsive, and we do care for things which we feel no impulse to try to understand. Sometimes the one sort of worth contributes to the other, and sometimes they appear to conflict. The esthetic experience of the cultivated person is in part a matter of understanding how a painting, say, or a piece of music or a poem produces its effect, but also the esthetic experience may be endangered by too much analysis. In general, it appears that beauty must involve a certain amount of illusion; the "machinery" must not be too manifest, or the interest in it too strong, or the effect is lost. In the field of activity, also, there is a separation, less easy to make clearly, between that which is spontaneous, going to its end directly and immediately, and that which involves a conscious, calculated marshalling of means. The distinction holds for both the activity whose worth is inherent and that whose worth lies rather in the result which it produces. In creation and control as in appreciation, there is more or less conflict between understanding and enjoying. We strive to understand the how and why of our actions, to analyze the technique; and yet when this process is carried too far, and it becomes altogether a matter of routine manipulation of means to produce an effect preconceived and foreseen, there is a loss of interest in the action. It might be interesting, if space allowed, to go into the problem of classifying our value experiences on the basis of the various combinations of these types, but our purpose is merely to sketch certain aspects of the meaning of science in connection with the field of values. The immediate purpose of science is to enable us to understand, which again covers the understanding both of beauty and of the technique of action. But our modern, sophisticated way of thinking tends more and more to subordinate the desire for understanding as such to a desire for control. It can hardly be doubted that the spirit of science itself makes for this interpretation. A scientific age tends to relegate understanding for its own sake to the realm of sentiment and romance, an order of value regarded rather contemptuously in comparison with considerations of practice and power. The value of science is found in the results which it makes it possible to achieve, and science itself takes its place as a tool, tending toward the level of necessary evils. The love of science is brought by the scientific spirit into the position of a sentiment to be viewed apologetically. In the scientific, evolutionary, view of the world, too, the scientific interest is "explained" as a Spencerian transfer of attention from the real end to the means, which becomes erected into a pseudo-end. Some rather obvious restrictions in outlook which arise from giving too predominant a place to science may be mentioned at this point. A scientific atmosphere obscures if it does not eclipse a considerable part of the field of values. It centers attention on the results of activity, weakening or destroying the value of the process. In addition, it emphasizes the quantitative aspect of the result which can be treated scientifically as against the qualitative or esthetic aspect which cannot. For these reasons activity comes to be concentrated along lines where results can be predicted and brought about "efficiently," that is, in the largest possible quantity with relation to a given stock of resources or productive power. This means concentration in lines of essentially repetitious work as contrasted with the spontaneous and creative. For science, manifestly, cannot direct creation in any true sense; it can only copy, or at best rearrange old elements in new combinations. True creation, which is the field of art, involves the invention of new ends as well as new means for reaching them. Science is always striving to "understand" art and produce its effects by the calculated application of rules; but to the extent that it succeeds in its endeavor the result is no longer art in the true The evil is multiplied by the fact that because science can never explain why this is so, it tends to deny the fact. Real creation sense. |