Review of Veblen's "The Place of Science in Modern Civilization", by H[enry] W[aldgrave] Stuart The Journal of Philosophy Psychology and Scientific Methods, (New York); Vol. III. No. 14. (July 6, 1906), pp. 385-387. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- [385] The Place of Science in Modern Civilization. Thorstein Veblen. The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. XI, No. 5, March, 1906. Pp. 585-609. Few of all the problems involved in the current controversy over pragmatism are felt by all parties thereto to be so crucial for the 'new philosophy' as that of the motivation and the criteria of 'pure science.' Professor Veblen's paper is an interesting and important contribution to this phase of the discussion, treating of the problem, as it does, consistently and with authority from the cultural point of view. Modern civilization is peculiarly matter of fact and, in consistency with this character, its final appeal on any large question which is to be disposed of for good and all is taken to the scientist rather than to 'the lawyer, the duelist, the priest, the moralist or the college of heraldry.' How, then, "has this cult of science arisen? What are its cultural antecedents? How far is it in consonance with hereditary human nature? And, what is the nature of its hold on the convictions of civilized men?" Psychologists of the pragmatic school declare that 'the idea is essentially active' and presentative of an end toward which the agent strives. However, all pragmatic intelligence has its roots in tropisms and instincts which can be called pragmatic only by a figure of speech, since they look to no conscious end, nor are they attended with any feeling of personal agency. "On the human plane, intelligence (the selective effect of inhibitive complication) may throw the response [to stimulus] into the form of a reasoned line of conduct looking to an outcome that shall be expedient for the agent. This is naïve pragmatism of the developed kind. ... But that is not all. The inhibitive nervous complication may detach another chain of response to the given stimulus, which does not spend itself in a line of motor conduct and does not fall into a system of uses." This collateral 'excess discharge' is the source of such cultural phenomena as play in man (as also in animals), mythology and folklore, the development of which is effected by an 'irrelevant attention' sustained by 'idle curiosity,' which contrasts markedly with the 'pragmatic attention' set going by the same environing object but sustained by the more self-conscious interest in ways and means of gaining ends. Accordingly, in each successive stage of the evolution of culture we find two sorts of knowledge current, the pragmatic or teleological, and the [386] idle or disinterested. (Professor Veblen announces at this point that he intends to use the term 'pragmatic' more narrowly than is now the custom, so as to denote such knowledge as is 'designed to serve an expedient end for the knower' in contradistinction to 'idle learning.') "The pragmatic knowledge of the early days differs scarcely at all in character from that of the maturest phases of culture. Its highest achievements in the direction of systematic formulation consist of didactic exhortations to thrift, prudence, equanimity and shrewd management - a body of maxims of expedient conduct. In this field there is scarcely a degree of advance from Confucius to Samuel Smiles." On the other hand, the extraordinary development of human knowledge, from primitive savagery down and including modem science, has for the most part been achieved through 'irrelevant attention' under the guidance of 'idle curiosity.' In savagery we have under this head myths and legends having no pragmatic value of necessity, though they may incidentally 'have a practical value imputed to them as a ground of superstitious observances.' Among peaceable communities of the savage culture 'the myths, on the one hand, and the work-day knowledge of uses, materials, appliances and expedients, on the other hand, may be nearly independent of one another.' So, among ourselves, 'pure science,' like savage myth-making, finds its motivation in interests lying apart from any thought of technology or pragmatism. This independence is, however, not complete. Myth-making is the work of idle curiosity, but idle curiosity has its sense of dramatic necessity, and this controls its course. In working out its constructions, its alleged 'interpretations' of the facts of nature, idle curiosity conceives these latter in an animistic way and construes their behavior as a reasoned procedure looking to their own advantage or looking to the achievement of some end which these objects are conceived to have at heart for reasons of their own. In all this, of course, the conditions, social and other, of the agent's own every-day pragmatic activities must play a leading part. Thus (1) the cosmologies of savagery and lower barbarism are cosmogonies. "Procreation, birth, growth and decay constitute the cycle of postulates within which the dramatized process of natural phenomena run their course; creation is procreation in these archaic theoretical systems, and causation is gestation and birth. The archaic cosmological schemes of Greece, India, Japan, China, Polynesia and America all run to the same general effect on this head." (2) The cosmologies of the higher barbarians of the middle ages "are cast in terms of a feudalistic hierarchy of agents and elements, and the causal nexus between phenomena is conceived animistically after the manner of sympathetic magic. ... The relation in which the deity or deities [in higher barbarism] are conceived to stand to facts is no longer the relation of progenitor, so much as that of suzerain." In fact, medieval philosophy and science, as developments of the dominating upper-class culture, are shot through and through with pragmatism. Only among the lower orders does the motive of idle curiosity and myth-making survive in its [387] savage purity and bring forth fruit. (3) With the advent of modern times handicraft workmanship comes more and more to be the type of men's every-day pragmatic efforts, and, accordingly, 'workmanship gradually [supplants] differential dignity as the authoritative canon of scientific truth, even on the higher levels of speculation and research.' The maxims of cause and effect now for the first time hold unquestioned sway. Nevertheless, causes are conceived as 'at work in a quasi-personal manner.' (4) Since in recent times, 'the machine technology has made great advances, the formulations of science have made another move in the direction of impersonal matter of fact.' The dramatic interpretation of natural phenomena has become less anthropomorphic. And yet, although 'by contrast with the pragmatic formulations of worldly wisdom these latter-day theories of the scientists appear highly opaque, impersonal and matter of fact,' still 'taken by themselves they must be admitted ... to show the constraint of the dramatic prepossessions that once guided the savage myth- makers.' (Professor Veblen in this connection suggests a comparison of the 'ideal of inert magnitudes' set forth in Karl Pearson's 'Grammar of Science' with the tenor of his actual work in later chapters and in his discussions of 'mother right' and related topics in 'The Chances of Death.' Modern science is, then, essentially dramatic and unpragmatic. The environment in which it flourishes is, it is true, an environment of machine technology, and this environment influences its development inevitably in the same way as feudalism influenced the development of medieval science and as the immediate overbearing importance of the natural phenomena of birth, growth and death in savage life influenced the primitive cosmological schemes. That its results are of use is, nevertheless, for the scientist, in principle, 'wholly a fortuitous and insubstantial coincidence.' Pure science is a matter of 'excess discharge'; technology is a method of pragmatic response to the world of stimulating objects. The discrepancy between idle and pragmatic knowledge is to-day 'wider than ever before.' Coming now to the third and fourth of the questions proposed above — ^modern, matter of fact 'pure science,' unpragmatic as it is in its motivation, is, nevertheless, so permeated by the impersonal spirit and tendency of the pragmatic machine technology as to be, despite its great credit and popularity, more or less of a shadow and a blight, subconsciously, upon the souls of men. The long schooling of the race in unpragmatic modes of thought during savagery fixed these ineffaceably so that nowadays not infrequently, "in the most advanced communities and even among the adepts of modern science, there comes up persistently the revulsion of the native savage against the inhumanly dispassionate sweep of the scientific quest. ... The ideal man and the ideal of human life ... is neither the finikin skeptic of the laboratory nor the animated slide-rule. The quest of science is relatively new. ... The normal man, such as his inheritance has made him, has, therefore, good cause to be restive under its dominion." LAKE FOREST COLLEGE H. W. Stuart. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------