Читать книгу The Unfinished Programme of Democracy - Richard Roberts - Страница 9

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Mr. Thorstein Veblen has rendered an important service to this generation by showing how the technology of the machine industry has invaded our minds and led us to an almost exclusive pre-occupation with processes. It is this intellectual bias which explains—at least in great part—our complete capitulation to the Darwinian hypothesis and accounts for the way in which we have pressed it out of its proper sphere to furnish clues in religion, history, and ethics—regions in which there are factors to be considered which are not included among the data of the doctrine of biological evolution. Here also is the explanation of the wide acceptance of the pragmatist philosophy. Pragmatism is indeed the characteristic philosophy of the machine-age; its postulate “that truth is what works” is clearly derived from the engine-shop, where efficiency is the only rule. Generally it may also be said that it is this mechanistic attention to processes which accounts for the importance and omnicompetency ascribed to the still juvenile science of psychology; and this is particularly true of the application of psychology and psychological method to the problems of sociology.

Psychology is the fruit of the application of the scientific method to mental processes; its subject matter consists of the observable phenomena of mind. Its application to sociology has produced an almost exclusive concentration on social functions; and while this has important uses, it does not furnish us with the clue we need to our sociological tasks. Mental functions, whether of the individual or of society, cannot be treated in the same way as chemical reactions. Chemical reactions are predetermined and invariable; human functions are dirigible. Those functions which ultimately govern and sustain human activity and determine human character are directed to more or less sharply recognised and chosen ends. It is indeed true that many of the processes which are concerned in the movement of life are, as Mr. Cooley has pointed out, unconscious and seemingly impersonal, such as those which account for the growth of tradition and the variations of language. Nevertheless, as Mr. Cooley himself very excellently shows in his illustration of the growth of a book in its author’s mind, even these unconscious and involuntary processes fall into line with a definitely fixed purpose of the mind.^[6] The problem of sound social integration is not merely an affair of processes operating properly. For human powers may function, at least for a time, in a normal way even while they are being directed to mischievous and perverse ends. Modern Germany supplies an instance of unexampled attention to social processes; but it is not open to question that all this has been directed to a perverse and immoral end, and has (as the event has shown) culminated in catastrophe and confusion. Just so a man’s intellect may operate brilliantly; yet the man himself may be a thief. Psychology may claim that its business is a disinterested study of processes; and the claim is justly made. But the same claim cannot be made for sociology. The sociologist may indeed claim that he too is a scientist; and that his science like every other is empirical and not teleological. But the two claims are not parallel. Psychology deals with an opus operatum, the actual concrete mind as it is; whereas the assumption which underlies all sociology is that it is handling an opus operandum, a work still to be done, the production of a living and wholesome society. The teleological interest is necessarily supreme. This does not mean that sociology has not its empirical aspects; of course, it has; and these aspects are all important for the construction of a sound sociology. But we shall produce a mere torso of sociology if we suppose we can ignore the problem of ends. The relation of psychology to sociology is of much the same character as its relation to education or the relation of physiology to public health.

6. Charles Horton Cooley, Social Process, p. 16.

It is probable, moreover, that the obscuration of this question of ends has been helped by the modern acceptance of the doctrine of progress. This in its turn appears to be mainly due to the application of the principle of evolution to human affairs. We have supposed that because living nature shows a process of development, the life of man is also necessarily governed by a law of predestined progress, from worse to better, from the simple to the more complex. The result of this evolutionary view of human affairs has been to make the study of ends appear impertinent. The ends are already determined; why then trouble ourselves about them? It is true that we do not know whither this vis a tergo is propelling us; the only thing we can do, therefore, is to study the processes by which it works as we see them in operation in men’s minds, whether the single or the mass mind. We shall observe them, duly record them, and contemplate them in a spirit of detachment, without concerning ourselves overmuch with their destination. But it is now too late in the day to suppose that this attitude can be seriously maintained. The area of the margin of human freedom may be a subject of controversy; but it is impossible to take seriously the kind of determinism which denies the possibility of directing human action to deliberately chosen ends. The actual range of our control over our actions may be limited; but within those limits it is very real. And in any case it does not require to be very much to make the evolution hypothesis of very doubtful validity as an interpretation of the whole life of man.^[7]

7. For a concise statement of the philosophical argument against a doctrine of progress based upon biological evolution, see Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic, pp. 105, 106.

Sociology must concern itself with ends; and it must do so at its own beginnings. If this means that it has to forfeit its claim to a strictly scientific status, so be it. There is no virtue in replying that the question of ends is an affair of speculation and hypothesis. That is indeed true; but it cannot be helped. We are compelled to speculate concerning ends since there is no other way of reaching a conception of them. And there is no harm in speculation so long as it starts from the soundest available premises, and its conclusions are not hardened into dogma. Sociology will hardly rise above an academic futility until it abandons its obsession to rank as a pure science and makes bold to define however tentatively the goal toward which social processes should be directed. Let it by all means make its surveys and collate its statistics unremittingly; but these things it ought to do and not to leave the other undone.