CHAPTER II
SCIENCE -- THE RED HERRING
Questions of aesthetics and how to build a social world around humanistic values are, by no means, new. The quest to love and create a social world in the light of that vision is perhaps as old as consciousness itself. Throughout the ages, people have testified to love as the crux of experience, and what is important in life. Yet, a practical theory of love has not been mapped into reality. Indeed, questions of the ''Good" have often been abandoned in favor of more "realistic" pursuits. At the same time, here we are entertaining the possibility of a humanistic sociology, and embracing Ruth Benedict's idea of synergy -- that there is such a thing as the ''Good" culture. Gregory Bateson (1979), in discussing similar questions, said
There has to be a reason why these questions have never been answered . . . . We might take that as our first clue to the answer -- the historical fact that so many . . . have tried and not succeeded. The answer must be somehow hidden. It must be so: That the very posing of these questions always gives off a false scent, leading the questioner off on a wild goose chase. A red herring (p. 234.)
I would suggest that the red herring is none other than science.
It will be remembered that at the time that science was succeeding with technological breakthroughs and was enjoying new-found credibility with the public, the romantic poets warned against the abuses of its vision. Romantic poets openly declared war on what they called, "Newton's sleep" (Roszak, 1969). Having conceived of Christ as the Imagination, William Blake maintained that Science was the Anti-Christ and that only "dark Satanic mills" could come from it (Bateson, 1979, p. 241). In all, the romantic poets saw Science as destroying all that was holy and magical in life: they saw it negating the humanistic vision.
This division between the religious view and the scientific view of man had not always been the case. The fact that early scientific issues were also church issues illustrates that they were both operated in the same theater. Often the theologian was also the scientist. Science had begun as a quest to find the laws of God: since God had designed the universe according to laws, the early scientist sought to find a law so obvious that the heretic would be forced to admit that God did exist (Bosworth, 1977).
Science would thus find God's rulebook and prove His existence. It was conceived of as a Golden Ladder Of Progress which would take us to knowledge and to God. This quest for God's rulebook might be seen as already providing the basis for a formidable "red herring."
Science was thus conceived of as a Tower of Babel which would lead to heaven. It was Spinoza (1951) who first realized that something quite different was happening. His conclusion was gradually whispered all over Europe: "God or Nature." It did not make any difference whether the word God was used in scientific theories or whether the word Nature was used.
The ancients had sought to find the fundamental building blocks of the universe what they termed "corpuscles." With the "finding" of atoms and the ordering of the physical world by atomic weight, it appeared that the fundamental building blocks had been found (Meyerson, 1930). However, Einstein's theory and its application in splitting the atom did more than just produce the nuclear age -- it destroyed the philosophical basis of science. The atom was supposedly the fundamental building block and, therefore, unsplitable. It became apparent that atoms were not really there: they had been constructed by the mind. The weight definition which was an agreement to operate towards the world in a certain manner had proved to have practical applications. It had been shown that we can analyze the world by comparing the weights of various items, but we are constructing those items -- not finding the truth. The agreement to accept the weight definition for physical science was an agreement to operate by a chosen metaphor. As Kenneth Burke (1945) summarized,
Those who have criticized the use of metaphor have for the most part not realized how little removed such description is from the ordinary intellectual method of analysis . . . . When we describe in abstract terms, we are not sticking to the facts at all, we are substituting something else for them just as much as if we were using out and out metaphor . . . . Indeed, are we not coming to see that the whole works of scientific research, even entire schools, are hardly more than the patient repetition, in all its ramifications, of a fertile metaphor (p. 126)
The Truth appeared not to be what we had thought. It suddenly began to look like we were not going to find an Absolute Truth. The Logical Positivists were mistaken: the Universe was not going to tell us how to act. It looked like Science was closer to art than had been suspected. Life could not be solved first on paper. Before we live -- before we act -- we cannot fully know the plot. Science will not free us from the responsibility of acting. The "change the world" conversation cannot be solved on paper. We cannot wait to find the truth before we get around to acting toward the good. If we wait, we will never be finished in time.
It is strange that at the same time that Science was being criticized for serious epistemological problems, it had become the predominant metaphor in society. In fact, currently, Science is Western culture. It is the judicial decision-making processes, the extension of science into rational rules and role descriptions which is bureaucracy, and the very method of running government and business alike.
Primitive world views are being erased from the face of the earth. The scientific world view has won out through technological magic. The technology of cameras, television, automobiles, and even "Coca-Cola" was no match for the primitive methods (Ogburn and Nimkoff, 1955; Carpenter, 1970; ,McLuhan, 1971. We live in a world of technological magic. The assumption is that surely the world view which gave us this magic must be superior.
Cultural diversity is being flattened into one scientific technological culture. Primitive world views remain only as curiosities. The rational-scientific banner has become the official version of reality.
It is at this point that a counterculture becomes imperative. It was Jung who first sought to recover the irrational component from primitive cultures (Jung, 1964). He saw the need to preserve the ancient understandings of man's drama. It was meaning and relatedness which the primitive world view expressed. It is alienation and separateness which the scientific world view emphasizes (Fromm, 1968).
Perhaps, we do not see the significance of Ruth Benedict's idea of synergy and the choice between cultural arrangements because we see only one culture. The scientific imperative has obscured choices between cultures -- between the "good" culture and the unsatisfying. Culture limits and structures the options which can occur to us. We see no possibility except the scientific realism.
At the same time that science is being popularized as it colonizes culture, it is in trouble philosophically. Ancient philosophers had a debate over whether the first step should be to "find the truth" or to "make the good." The search for truth emerged victorious and the 2,000 year journey to science was launched. But now, even the physicists -- our most reified version of science -- do not know what is going on (Needleman, 1979; Hampden-Turner, 1970). Perhaps, it was not possible to depart from the difficulty of the "making the good" argument so easily.
On the path of our search for the truth, it has been shown that all knowledge is personal knowledge" (Polanyi, 1958); that major scientific "truths" were serendipitous discoveries (Butterfield, 1957); and that all major scientific discoveries occurred because somebody (either consciously or unconsciously) violated established methods and truths (Feyerbend, 1970). The truth appears not to be what we had thought it was at all.
The conclusion is slowly being reached that science is subject to the same dynamics as other human systems. The great success of the physical sciences occurred when the decision was made to ignore the fact that science is a human act. The physical scientist decided to ignore questions of human consciousness: to pretend that they weren't looking, that they were just seeing. The human act of looking became unavailable for inspection (Bosworth, 1977). This is precisely where the physical sciences separated from philosophy and made their great progress.
Later, we have the development of something called the ''social sciences." This is a slippery maneuver, at best. The assumption is made that there are "mature" and "immature" sciences. Social science is supposed to follow the lead of the physical sciences. Science weeds out those who would be scientists. Not only does the world view of science make it difficult for people who do not share club views of reality to obtain membership, but graduate schools and professional associations are maintained to eliminate those who do not follow club policy.
A personal anecdote might further illustrate the gate-keeping function of the scientific club. A friend of mine who was a graduate student in chemistry informed his advisor, while he was doing research on phosphates, that he thought that phosphates were mental constructs and that they did not really exist. His advisor replied, "If you cannot believe in phosphates, what can you believe in?" My friend was violating a domain assumption for club membership.
Science is a Method of Agreement
Science is a group of people who agree on a certain version of the world and agree to act in a certain manner towards it. It is almost a contractual arrangement. Kuhn (1964) showed that the scientific method is a way of agreement and settling arguments. It is not a matter of ''truth", but of popularity and one side winning an argument. Paradigm shifts have not been made because one argument is necessarily better, but because one side has succeeded in obtaining the necessary power to enforce its agreement. Kuhn noted that the slow, orderly progress depicted in science textbooks was a myth: each generation rewrote its history much as a political party might.
It is true that professional associations do not usually ban or censor members, but they do reduce certain views (and people) to irrelevance. If masters' theses, Ph.D. dissertations, and professional journals are any proof, it is a contractual agreement.
Scientific
Laws are Legislated
Scientific laws are not found, they are subject to a process of legislation just like any other law (Bosworth, 1977). They rely on the methods of argument and politics for endorsement. As Kuhn (1964) showed, often the change takes place by the old guard dying off, and with it the opposition to a new paradigm and laws.
Science
is Involved in Actively Shaping/Making The Universe
Science is not finding the truth, but is shaping to an image. The idea that scientific methods can be neutral is becoming increasingly suspect. The Heisenberg (1977) principle of indeterminacy, in physics, says that some particles in space cannot be seen without shining a light upon them. The act of shining a light on them then forever changes their velocity and direction. The act of seeing thus changes what we see, and we will never be able to know the truth (of what happened before we shined the light). The process of looking cannot be ignored. This is the conclusion which bothered Galileo centuries earlier. Galileo said that all matter has two types of properties: primary properties and secondary properties. However, the primary properties are really not "properties" at all. The secondary properties tell us what we see, but the primary properties tell us where to look in the first place. They are the arbitrary descriptions, definitions, and focuses without which we see nothing. Galileo realized that by telling us where to look, the physical sciences were not finding the truth, but making the world. Not only must the amateur looking through his telescope know where to look in the first place, he must know what to expect to see.
This is all very similar to the recent work of Piaget (195x) in psychology. In discussing the role of seeing and vision in the child's conception of reality, Piaget noted that a child must learn what is in an environment in order to see it. Children must learn where and on what to focus: this is why we wave objects in front of them. Parent; show them the environment. Cultural anthropology abounds with examples of how parents in different cultures have delineated the environment in different ways and socialized their children to see different realities (Benedict, 1934; Hoebel, 1949). Culture is a description which we learn to see. Goffman's (1974) frame analysis in sociology, made a similar point in saying that how we frame something determines what we see. Goffman's phenomenological approach also parallels Bateson's (1979) argument that a question frames the answer to it, and we must ask on what "surface" the answer to a particular question might be mapped. Science is not able to avoid the human component and attain objective truths. Our decisions on how and where to look, no matter how "objectively" we design our method of looking, will influence -- and to a large extent determine -- what we see. The question that science must now be asked is whether it has extracted virtually all that can be obtained or whether new methods can be incorporated for some new purpose other than the traditional scientific quest for truth, or whether we need to turn to new approaches.
Eddington said it quite nicely:
We have found that where science has progressed the farthest, the mind has but regained from nature that which the mind has put into nature. We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origin. At last we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint. And lo! it is our own (Matson, 1964, p. 125).
Our premises become our conclusions. Our domain assumptions (Gouldner, 1970) become our structure. Where we start is here we end up.
Even Descartes (1912), who recommended a method of doubt, could not avoid such circularity. He began by thinking and doubting and he concluded with ''I think, therefore I am.'' He started believing in the truth but chose the method of doubting all things and forcing the truth to reveal itself. Several times during his discourse, when he had worked his way into a philosophical corner, the "Angel of Truth" showed up to direct him on his way. If Descartes had not a priori subscribed to the theory of truth, we might expect him to be suspicious of the "Angel of Truth." His circular method of doubting proves only that he is doubting.
If where we start is where we end up and determines what we shall see on the journey, then where we start is of paramount importance. Once reified, perspectives tend to become self-perpetuating and very difficult to disengage. Perspectives can easily degenerate into name calling where it is felt that simply because we have labeled a phenomenon, we have understood it. Even if refutations to a theory are found, this does not disprove the theory. The exceptions are noted, cast as ''anomalies", and the theory then proceeds much as it did before. An example of an anomaly would be the "black hole" of physics. Black holes are defined as points in space where the "normal laws of physics are suspended." The points are then labeled as black holes and the normal mode of physics once again proceeds just as if black holes had never been discovered. It is only when the number of anomalies is too great, and a new theory is formed which incorporates more of them, that the reigning theory is displaced. In modern physics, some of the anomalies of Newtonian physics can be explained by Einsteinian physics, but some of the things which must be treated as anomalies under the Einsteinian system were explainable through the Newtonian system (Hampden-Turner, 1970). We have not generated d new "truth,'' we have merely incorporated a new metaphor for organizing our information.
We do not switch perspectives for strictly logical reasons or replace the old with the new because it is closer to the truth. We develop a new perspective because the area it synthesizes is deemed to be more important -- i.e., valuable. One simply chooses to look in a different way because one is more interested in the focus that this view affords. We switch paradigms because of values, not because of reason (Kuhn, 1964).
Love and magic cannot be treated as anomalies to science, but require an entirely different method than traditional scholarship and analysis. They defy the normal categorization of thought and discipline boundaries. To understand them, we require an approach which is more ecological. If we are to explore the humanistic concerns, we must not start with the methods and values of science, but with our humanistic values themselves. They demand a different manner of movement. In thought, it appears that there is no difference between ends and means: that how we star is where we will end up. If we are to study love and magic, we must allow our understanding of them to dictate our method of exploration.
The
Scientific World View
I would contend that the very premises of the scientific method become the scientific world view. The reason humanistic concerns, and love and magic, have not been studied is that they do not fit the scientific world view. If we are going to understand why this is so, we must understand the scientific world view. To do this, it is necessary to study the method of science.
Maslow (1966), in the Psychology of Science said that the one overwhelming finding of experiments in behavioral science was that subjects resent being experimented upon: that they felt that something crucial was being lost. If we were going to be truly empirical, then we must have taken such humanistic findings into account.
That the methods of scientific experimentation do not lend themselves to humanistic efforts should be made obvious from a list of scientific methods:
1. Objectivity and Detachment
2. Doubt, Null Hypothesis, Testing
3. Prediction and Control
4. Experiment, Artificial Settings
5. Value Free
Objectivity and Detachment
With objectivity and detachment, the purpose is to not contaminate our "data." A distinction is made between the knower and the known along the lines of a mind-body split. The objective scientist is not allowed to "take the role of the other" (Mead, 1934) or experience "sympathetic introspection" (Cooley, 1902). People are reduced to objects for our inquiry. The observer must refrain from being a part of the process being studied.
Objectivity would have us pretend that we are not doing the looking: it thus avoids problems of human consciousness. It demands an alienation between the ''In-Here" and the "Out-There": between the self and the object of study.
Objective consciousness is alienated life promoted to its most honorific status as scientific method. Under its auspices, e subordinate nature of our command only by estranging ourselves from more and more of what we experience . . . (Roszak, 1969, p. 232).
. . . whatever its epistemological status . . . objectivity as a state of being fills the very air we breathe in a scientific culture . . . the mentality of the ideal scientist becomes the very soul of the society (Roszak, 1969, p. 216).
Roszak (1969) continued:
when we challenge the finality of objective consciousness as basis for culture, what is at issue is the size of man's life. We must insist that a culture which negates or subordinates or degrades visionary experience commits the sin of diminishing our existence. Which is precisely what happens when we insist that reality is limited to what objective consciousness can turn into the stuff of science . . . (p. 234).
Objectivity would alienate us from the very concerns which a humanistic sociology would wish to study. "The essence of magic," noted Roszak (1969, p. 245), "lies in the sense that man and not-man stand on communicable terms with one another. The relationship is not that of in-Here impassively observing Out-there . . . ." Love is an active entering into another person, moving past boundaries of In-Here and Out-There (Fromm, 1956). It appears problematical to know love from an objective standpoint. Humanistic pursuits all emphasize involvement. It seems impossible to attain understanding of them from a method of objectivity and detachment. It is the caring for the not-I that is the very basis for the humanistic ethic. Doubt, Null Hypothesis, Testing , Humanistic enterprises might well follow Coleridge's method of the "willing suspension of disbelief." The emphasis might be placed upon trust rather than making things ''prove" their existence. It is very possible that some things only exist if one is willing to participate and entertain their existence. By accepting at the outset a method of null hypothesis and doubt, we exclude such phenomena from study.
Love and magic, as well as other humanistic visions, may well be such phenomena. Doubt and testing causes us to treat the magician as a charlatan and the lover as a con artist. Repeated testing may drive love and magic from our view. Because "they" won't adhere to our standards of testing, the scientist is apt to conclude that they don't exist. Love gets relegated to the realm of reciprocity and fair exchange, and magic gets routinized as hypnosis or mood.
The "Reality" of the scientific world view treats as real only such phenomena as can be presented publicly for inspection. The ''knowledge'' gained from intimate spaces is not subject to the scrutiny of such testing and is thus suspect or totally disregarded.
The experiment of the laboratory is the ideal model for scientific truth. Synchronicity, for example, by its very nature is not tailored to artificial, mock settings. Contriving conditions for its occurrence greatly reduces it as a phenomenon. Life cannot be adequately operationalized by role-playing. lf we want to get to the core of meaning, then an artificial setting is not the place.
The stance of the scientist is that of skeptic. Humanistic values emphasize an involvement, a trust-commitment. The scientific method of doubt is the anti-thesis of the humanistic ethic of love. The scientific world view produces the rational man who seeks to have reality prove itself. The humanistic vision produces the artist who creates and participates in a vision which he/she feels is real.
Prediction and Control
The scientific view assumes a mechanistic universe which can be reduced to cause and effect phenomena. The emphasis is upon power: obtaining predictable relationships which can then be controlled. Phenomena which "cannot be foreseen or reproduced at will . . . are essentially beyond the control of science" (Meyerson, 1930 p. 28). Science demands manipulable knowledge. It seeks reduction of the world into variables which can then be controlled. It follows Bacon in conceiving of knowledge as power,
The emphasis upon power is quite different from a humanistic epistemology. Humanism would treat life more as a miraculous occurrence than as a machine which is reducible to cause and effect parts. It is not power, but knowledge which is central to the humanistic perspective. It is only the "black magician" who would force knowledge into power (Roszak, 1969, p. 261). The humanistic conception resembles more the intimacy of love (Fromm, 1956).
If knowledge is but manipulatable information for power, then we have replaced understanding with explanation. Explanatory theories, the crux of science, require only that we map one variable to another for purposes of control; not that we appreciate the interrelationship. The effort of explanatory theory is to "explain away" the variance in a system: the analysis of variance would reduce all variance to identity (Meyerson, 1930). The unacknowledged assumption is that variance is deviance, and must be accounted for: reduced to identity.
The cause and effect model of the mechanistic metaphor stands in flagrant contrast to the humanistic view of the world and its beauty. The implications of such a metaphor for ecology and for human beings in general (Merchant, 1980) call into question how far we can push the mechanical metaphor and still retain both the person and the planet (Roszak, 1979). The humanistic consciousness desires a different kind of relationship with life. Love may be the choice to forego power for higher motivations. A method which premises prediction and control violates the very spirit of an exploration into humanism.
The cause and effect metaphor also has another consequence: in order to manipulate a subject, we must first have that subject in a manipulatable environment, i.e., under our control (Carpenter, 1970). This poses severe problems for freedom as well as for our conception of a fuller vision of humanity (Mills, 1959).
With the mechanistic model, it is presumed that the universe is "made" according to laws and science will find those laws. The status of laws in physics is under great debate (Polanyi, 1958; Kuhn, 1964). It has been noted earlier that scientific laws are not discovered, but are legislated. For the human "sciences," the question might be asked: if laws of human behavior were "discovered'' would they still work after they were made public or would people learn to "work the system?" Or if these laws were kept secret and available only for government use, would they not be the basis for the classified expertise which Mills (1959) and Gouldner (1970) feared? And, if they did not work, would there not be a tendency to enforce them?
The mechanistic metaphor, thus, poses severe problems for freedom and is political in nature. Humanists would seek a different model of knowledge.
Value Free
Science claims value neutrality. It has been argued previously that such neutrality is impossible: that the very act of framing a question and a method of inquiry is a value stance. What is critical here, though, is the fact that the Scientific world view would desire the pretense of ethical neutrality.
The implication is that values are somehow illegitimate; that they ill taint the work of building a secular science. Humanism underscores the point that values are the very basis of meaning and that if we must shape our work, we should do so in directions we intend -- not y unspoken and unconscious assumptions from unexamined metaphors. Humanism seeks a sacred enactment of values held to be the most important for living, not a secular alienation from all systems of meaning.
The essence of a humanistic epistemology is that over the ages, people have testified that there are better ways to live. These testimonials over experience must then be regarded as knowledge claims and examined as strategies. Benedict's (1970) idea of synergy reintroduced the idea of the "good" to the behavioral disciplines. It implied that there were choices over systems of meaning and that our choice of cultural arrangements had directional consequences.
The classified expertise claim of the scientific world view does not eliminate the need for choices and values, but it does limit the number of people involved in the decision-making process. It must be asked if any human being can be trusted with the type of knowledge that science aspires to: even if it were attainable, would it not be too great a temptation? We must structure our knowledge-finding process to the types of knowledge we wish to attain.
To study human processes, we cannot afford to neglect values. If we seek a humanistic sociology, we must formulate methods of movement and exploration which address the values we wish to promote. This requires leaving the scientific culture with all its subtle nuances and seeking methods which are congruent with our subject matter. We must return to the ancient problem of the Good and seek to build toward our values.
A Humanistic Epistemology
Fromm (1968) made the critical distinction between "living" human beings and "dead" ones: between life-enhancing social processes and life-strangling processes. The vale which he embraced was productiveness of the human capacity (1947): the growth and the unfolding of the individual through love (1956) -- all that contributes to the unfolding of life (1968). Fromm maintained that there are two ways of knowing. The first is the autopsy table of science with its method of dissection and analysis.
In children we often see this path to knowledge quite overtly. The child takes something apart, breaks it up in order to know it; or it takes an animal apart; cruelly tears off the wings of a butterfly in order to know it, to force its secret. The cruelty itself is motivated by something deeper: the wish to know the secret of things and of life (Fromm, 1956, p. 25).
This is the normal scientific mode of analysis: we take something apart to know its secret. We dissect the whole and then seek according to our mechanistic model to put it back together. Our cruelty is masked by the fact that we are using laboratory animals, but our method is clear: we must render things dead to know their secret. Even in biology, we know more of cadavers than we know of living bodies. Science by its method does not allow for change, or growth. It prefers the immobile: the fixed moment in time: the dead.
That the reader may be shocked by the extremity of such an argument and this portrayal of science does not mute its logical consequences. Even the experiments in the Nazi concentration camps can be seen as an extension of the power to know (Griffin, 1981) -- to reduce life and find its pulse and soul.
"The other path to knowing 'the secret,"' said Fromm (1956, p. 25), "is love.'' "Love is . . . knowledge . . . under the condition of the preservation of . . . integrity" (Fromm, 1947, p. 116). It is an entering into. It is an active participation and understanding. This is similar to Cooley's idea of "sympathetic introspection" and has links with Weber's verstheen approach (Matson, 1964). The philosopher Bergson (1949, p. 21) said, "there are two profoundly different ways of knowing a thing. The first implies that we move round the object; the second, that we enter into it." The first, Bergson called analysis; the second he called intuition. Intuition is a "kind of intellectual sympathy.'' It is an attempt to grasp the whole. Bergson maintained that it is only by intuition that we grasp the whole; it is never understandable only by the elements of analysis. This leap of faith is necessary for our understanding. Hocking (1959) in Types of Philosophy concurred: " . . our experience of love and beauty have a decisive word to say. we speak of them as 'feelings'; what if they are also knowings? I suggest that they are such . . . they are. . . not only emotions, but moments of metaphysical insight (P. 09xx). This method of intuition is very similar to Fromm's "knowing something under conditions of its integrity" which he called love. Analysis does not seem to fit our understanding of love.
As the poet Wordsworth said,
Sweet is the lore that Nature brings; -Our meddling instinct Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things we murder to dissect
The artist and the poet seek a different form of understanding which preserves and respects life and growth. The intuitive role of the artist and the analytical role of the scientist have been often recognized, but the artist is usually subjugated in the scientific purpose and economic "reality." Intuition is "credited" as the source of ideas/hypotheses, but must then be translated into knowledge by the process of science and its methods. As Roszak (1969) argued,
One cliched argument suggests that the work of the scientist begins with the poet's sense of wonder (a dubious hypothesis at best) but then goes beyond it armed with spectroscope and light meter. The argument misses the key point: the poet's experience is defined precisely by the fact that the poet does not go beyond it . . . . Or are we to believe it was by failure of intelligence that Wordsworth never graduated into the status of weatherman (p. 253)?
C. P. Snow spoke of two cultures, one scientific and one humanistic, but "scarcely grasped the terrible pathos that divides these two cultures" (Roszak, 1969, p. 232). "We cannot rely on science for methods of running the world and criteria for reality without becoming a scientific culture and subverting the humanistic vision." It is Roszak (1969) who concluded:
We must be prepared to entertain the astonishing claim men like Blake lay before us: that here are eyes which see the world not as d commonplace sight or as scientific scrutiny sees it, but see it transformed, made lustrous beyond measure, and in seeing the world so, see it as it really is (p. 240). Italics Mine]
"The legitimate use of images is to express the truth, not to possess it," wrote Watts (1951, p. 26). ". . . you cannot understand life and its mysteries as long as you try to grasp it. You cannot grasp it just as you cannot walk off with a river in a bucket. If you try to capture running water in a bucket, it is clear that you do not understand it and that you will always be disappointed, for in the bucket the water does not run" (Watts, 1951, p. 24).
We find that Blake was right: The Scientific culture is in danger of torturing the insight out of life; it is the ''Anti-Christ" of the imagination and fundamentally antagonistic to the humanistic vision. Science would take the beauty and grandeur out of life and reduce us to a lesser version of humanity -- the "cheerful robot" of Mills (1959, p. 175). Science means the submission of awe and wonder, of imagination and reverence for life to a secondary status.
It was Blake who wrote: To see eternity in a grain of sand To hold infinity in your hand
This is hardly the scientific method. Blake and the romantic poets saw science destroying religion: the mystical view of human nature. And ultimately, unless we are willing to believe in a Procrustean bed where our legs are stretched if we are too short and our head cut off if we are too tall, science renders s into something less than fully human. It means death.
We are a long way from the original scientific Tower of Babel which would take us to God. Science has gotten all of life on its table, but at a terrible cost.
Knowledge is power, wrote Francis Bacon. Science has followed Bacon in concluding that power is manipulatable knowledge. Humanism would recommend a different epistemology. As Omar Khayyam said: "To each must come the time to decide between truth and wisdom." It is wisdom for living which humanistic efforts seek, not information for manipulation (Merchant, 1980).
It is not the focus of this paper to develop a new epistemology: only to argue that such an epistemology exists, and to suggest its outline. The actual articulation of such an epistemology may well be the critical philosophical issue of our times. The general outline of this humanistic epistemology can be found developing throughout the culture.
The scientific assumptions for knowledge revolve around the idea of territorializing the unknown. This is the frontier version of the explorer searching enchanted lands and bringing back riches for the king's table. Nature is gradually tamed and her resources made available for the building blocks of society. The wild becomes charted, homesteaded, and gradually made ''civilized." It is the idea of Manifest Destiny which would march us across the frontier sure of our purpose -- and its path to knowledge.
If
we were to illustrate this epistemology, we would have an endless series
of lines as the boundaries of knowledge gradually were stretched and
the area of the unknown became colored in by the known.
This is also the strategy of Freud's famous dictum for psychology: "where id was, let ego be." The unconscious becomes conscious; the unknown, becomes known. It is both the tactic of our science and the history of Western culture. It is our ground-rule assumption to the irrational and mystery. The limits of such an epistemology have been amply challenged in the twentieth century. Jung (1964) noted that the rational, "masculine" elements of culture have been over-emphasized and the irrational "feminine" aspects now need to be recovered and developed before we can further progress as a culture. The recovery and articulation of primitive ., --mythology is an important task which holds continued relevance for the psyche if we are going to build a culture which is in tune with the needs of the person. Jungian psychology allows the irrational free space to play between the lines of thought. Ernest Becker, working out of the rational Western tradition, evolved two themes -- the denial of death (1973) and cultures as hero systems (1962) -- which present limits -- propositions to such rationality. Hero systems are methods of denying and transcending death while questing for a solution to life's problem of meaning. Given our human frailty, our hero systems remain imperfect --admitting to something less than a total map of reality. Fromm (1956), among other humanists, suggested an alternative epistemology which strives not to grasp life and analyze it in strict Aristotelian terms, but to allow it to flow and know it through love. The ecology movement has presented us with an accumulated wisdom that perhaps the mechanistic metaphor of our science has run its course, and that we cannot press the metaphor farther without endangering the very existence of life (Merchant, 1980; Commoner, 1971; Roszak, 1979). The eminent domain/manifest destiny of the scientific-technological imperative appear daunted by an ecological perspective which emphasizes balance as opposed to final solutions or methods toward progress. The sanity of mining and abstracting all of the world's resources is being reviewed in balance against the natural beauty and our conception of what is contained in a "better" world. From the ecology movement may emerge a new epistemology which redefines the whole relationship between man and environment, between the knower and the known.
Merchant (1980) documented how our whole conception of nature and of women (and the intuitive) stems from the scientific revolution and its metaphors on nature and mechanism. Griffin (1978) showed how the metaphors which we have used to obtain control and certainty over nature are the same metaphors which we have used to tame and still our very conception of human nature.
The way that we have explored and territorialized the earth; mined its resources and laid bare its timer; carved its mountains and built blocks for houses according to our geometrical designs -- this is the same way that we have approached and shaped knowledge under our scientific world view. The frontier is gradually colonized, known, and made tame. The scientific scrutiny misses the fact that e may be missing the opportunity to know beauty as we push the boundaries of our civilization to their limits.
It is said that Francis Bacon, as attorney general of England, modeled his scientific method much after a witch-hunt (Merchant, 1980). The method of truth was the method of the Inquisition. Nature must be forced to reveal her secrets. Bacon says that science should ''hound nature in her wandering" and "make no scruple of entering and penetrating into these holes and corners when the inquisition of truth is the whole object" (Merchant, 1980, p. 165). Morality and values must take a secondary place to the pursuit of truth. Such an approach shows no concern for the subject under study, but only seeks to extract the truth by whatever means necessary and then use such "knowledge" for manipulation and power. Even if the witch is to die in the process or end up seriously deformed this is of no consequence. Such a metaphor can only leave us with a terrible latent cost when we apply it to nature. It takes on even more graphic proportions when human nature is placed upon the rack to be studied by the methods of such an epistemological inquisition.
The language of the historical scientist is only slightly removed from its actual historical impact. Its metaphors have tended to become our common-sense assumptions for our methods and our epistemology (Merchant, 1980). We must carve back the great wilderness. We must territorialize the unknown. We must cage and domesticate the wild beast. We must mine the earth. We must explore uncharted lands and bring back riches for the king's table. We must cut back the frontier and erect civilization upon the wilderness.
Order has prevailed in this twentieth century. The frontier has been pushed back and civilization erected so "completely" that the ecologist and the humanist now must question the wisdom of the scientific technological imperative which brought us this world view and this world. e appear no closer to capturing the truth. We are left to wonder if we should await the next scientific-technological breakthrough patiently or whether it is now time to question its very assumptions and limits. Is the epistemology of science bringing us closer to "knowing,' or are we in danger of limiting, deforming, and ultimately destroying the very life which we would study?
It must be recognized that the core assumption of a scientific epistemology revolves around the idea of Power. "Knowledge is power''; ''human knowledge and power meet as one" (Merchant, 1980, p. 247). Knowledge becomes explanatory theories which can be used for prediction and control. Power becomes the key element.
"Bacon transformed the magical tradition by calling upon the need to dominate nature not for the sole benefit of the individual magician but for the good of the entire human race" (Merchant, 1980, p. 169). This is in direct contradiction to the earlier folklore of the Western tradition which held that the truth could not be captured -- and to place the life force upon the rack and seek to torture its secrets from it was not only foolhardy, but imminently dangerous and always self-destructive.
Two examples of such folklore might suffice for illustration here. The first is the legend of the Holy Grail and the ''Rhine Gold." 'Whoever may after endless quests eventually find the Grail and the Rhine Gold must immediately ask two questions ('"What is the purpose of the Grail?" and "Who does it serve?") or forever perish. The power of the Grail can only be attained without perishing by asking those essential questions of life and value; the power can only be dealt with by understanding questions of knowledge and the implications of such power The Grail is not captured; it is part of d larger quest. This is not the value-free power and knowledge of science, but the power born from the understanding of the knowledge and meaning of a deeper secret. this is the knowledge to which the magician alludes. While science offers a secular technique for power, the epistemology of the magician maintains a sacred version of knowledge which involves the whole self.
The second folklore example of an alternative epistemology is the first great novel to emerge from the American frontier: Moby Dick. Although Ahab seemed in some ways to have a humanistic consciousness (he stared into Starbuck's eye and said that "there is nothing finer than to look into a human eye"; that this was as far as infinity went), he could not give up the quest for his power -- he could not let go of his other desire (science?) to "know" what is greater than he, to have his power know no bounds, and capture and conquer that force. His vengeance was not upon the past but upon not knowing thoroughly; of having vast power and finding an exception to it. When Starbuck tried to dissuade him from his path, Ahab noted that "we have been having this conversation before the oceans rolled and we will be having it after they cease": that eventually man must seize the veil and grasp its secrets. In the end, Ahab's inability to live without this final information led him to his destruction. Again, the theme: power only goes so far, it must be tempered with knowledge.
Both the Holy Grail legend and Melville's (198}) Moby Dick suggest a different epistemology from the scientific ''knowledge is power" rendition. he creative power which is the center of the life force is treated as irreducible -- uncapturable.
The irreducibleness of the life force is dealt with scientifically through the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and his distinction between noumenon and phenomenon. Noumena are the metaphysical underpinnings which cannot be known by the "sense." Phenomena are the real of appearances. -Science is thus the study of phenomena and not metaphysical intuitions. The world of science is thereafter "rescued" from philosophical criticisms and can advance without further protest. However, what such a "rescue operation" does is equate the world with phenomena. Noumena become virtually 'unknowable'' and the world is built around the appearances that are phenomena. Soon, the analysis of phenomena is treated as ''approximating' the world of noumena (Homans, 1977) and we abuse our method to the point of claiming the whole world as phenomena and forgetting the world of noumena except as a first-principle concession for the beginning of our analysis.
KantÕs distinction between noumena and phenomena was to have saved western thought from the crisis spawned by the philosophy of David Hume. While Hume is normally interpreted as meaning the death of thought, he actually had provided the basis for a humanistic epistemology and the very beginning of a relevant dialog. Hume's idea of the "secret springs" is the basis of this humanistic epistemology. The life force cannot be grasped and placed upon the table of analysis. It cannot be known through our methods of science. Instead, we must accept the ''secretness" of the core. We must find methods of moving "around" it given the nature of its being secret. Epistemology is, then, not a straight-line journey to truth and the shading in of unknown areas until we achieve total knowledge, but a journey of wisdom where we achieve more and more understanding without ever exhausting and reducing the core. (See Figure 2 on the following page.)
The phrase 'the secret springs" can be translated as several other conceptions without losing its meaning: the life force, the spring of creativity, the "muse'', the creative power which generates the evolutionary time bomb, and so forth . . . . It is comparable, of course, to Kant's noumena but makes an opposite contention. The "secret springs" may be the Rhine Gold or the Holy Grail or the illusive white whale . . . . The secret springs are magic.
Carlos Castenada's attribution to Don Juan of the "tonal" and the "nagual" serves to further illuminate the idea of the secret springs and of the distinction between noumena and phenomena. The tonal is everything "which can be placed upon the table." The nagual is everything else. The tonal is, then, properly, phenomena -- the world of appearances, what can be named, and the process of talking (philosophizing) about what is named, in short -- analysis. The nagual is noumena. Don Juan adds that it is where ''power hovers.'' This is quite the same, then, as the "secret springs."
The authenticness of Castenada's work is irrelevant. I personally might contend that the first two books are historical, the third Castenada's dissertation, the fourth Garfinkel's disguised lecture notes (and the fifth masculine-intuitive karma, with the sixth being only pure insanity).
The question of knowledge is one of value. Having experienced power, what is left now is wisdom, beauty, and happiness: following the path of the heart where one can relax. If the secret springs can be experienced and witnessed, then they can also be testified to. It is indeed the testimony of people across their lives which might be worthy of being called knowledge claims. And throughout the ages, we have had people testifying that there are "better' ways to live. We have had people talking about and testifying to an experience which they termed love and held to be the core of meaning: talking of a magic as an experience which transforms their vision. While this experience is not dissectible on the analytic table, it can be experienced, it can be testified to, and we can return to visit such an experience. It is this experience to which the humanist would wish to talk and testify.
Life is not explainable. Explanatory theories do not fit the experience. It is irreducible. Life is closer to a miracle. We can know it only through intuition -- a leap of vision. As Bergson (1949) argued, even the duration and experience of our own lives is only known by intuition. This is the only way that we ''senseÓ the whole: by the leap of intuition. Kantian theory leaves intuition as the troubled source of first principles. Hume's idea of "secret springs" provides the perfect canopy for encompassing a different view!
We might desire still another metaphor to illustrate the humanistic conception of knowledge. We can compare love and magic to unicorns. hey flee from our grasp. But beckon to be allowed free play in our lives. Such a metaphor may seem like sheer fantasy. But it is far from fantasy.
In the Last Unicorn, Beagle (1968) wove a tale which in many ways is the "sequel" to the ''Don Juan" books and the bottom line on magic. The would-be magician follows the unicorn seeking to know her magic and mystery. But unicorns have become rare in a world of science. We see few wonders. Beauty no longer mystifies us as much now that things are explainable. Yet, love and the magical still appear in our lives much as unicorns. We cannot capture them. We cannot own them. We can only now them and come to follow them. Love and magic cannot be harnessed. They can only be followed. One does not chain magic to their efforts, but one can take steps to follow. Science reduces the world to neutrality. Love and magic are steps we make to willingly follow something that we value. Humanistic epistemology begins with values, with choice. It is the step to following this illusive unicorn of love and magic. One recognizes fully well that s/he' will not own or capture it. But one delights in coming to know it and learn its secrets.
Knowledge, then, becomes wisdom -- knowing life; having walked the paths of power, Knowledge becomes d discussion of value; what is better, and how do we take the wisdom that we have learned from the ''secret" and construct from it?
The experience of such wisdom most have called love. A humanistic epistemology would, I believe, contain this assumption: that knowledge is love. Love is the ability to move past power -- to share it: to take the risk of allowing someone else enough respect to let them be and grow. It is moving past individual ego-stakes, collapsing the walls of self and other, and taking the time to know another self, environment, and others. It is declassifying power -- no longer keeping it as an obsession for personal victory. Love is the ability to know someone else. It is the step to knowledge.
The truth of which we have always spoken is an experience to which we wish to testify. It is the experience which we have called love and magic. The wisdom that we seek is that we know knowledge (love) -- having come through power we move back down to play, to share, and to know.
We can only now the center with our heart. e can only know the secret springs through love. The reducible truth of science will forever be beyond our grasp. But we can talk and testify, and experience what we know: the light that is within us. this is the humanistic epistemology.
The center may be a "secret," but this does ,not mean the death of philosophy (and talking), nor does it mean the death of movement or life. It means recognizing our condition. We know little of final truths: what we can claim is by nature existential. We are living. We are dying. We stand on the earth. Our imagination reaches to the stars.
The secret springs do not prevent us from moving. They merely recommend a different method and purpose for talking and philosophizing.
As Watts (1951, p. 23) said, "the common error . . . is to mistake the symbol for the reality, to look at the finger pointing the way and then suck it for comfort rather than follow it." We must leave behind the desired easy road maps of science. We are left with questions of values: what matters? -- this is the quest of our knowledge.
. . . the only way we shall ever recapture the sort of knowledge Lao-tzu referred to in his dictum 'those who know do not speak,' is by subordinating the question 'how shall we know?' to the more existentially vital question 'how shall we live' (Roszak, 1969, p. 233)?
To ask this question is to insist that the primary purpose of human existence is not to devise ways of piling up ever greater heaps of knowledge, but to discover ways to live from day to day that integrate the whole of our nature by way of yielding nobility of conduct, honest fellowship, and joy . . . . Were we prepared to accept the beauty of the fully illuminated personality as our standard of truth -- or of ultimate meaningfulness -- then we should be done with the idiocy of making fractional evaluations of men and ourselves (Roszak, 1969, P. 237).
As Whitehead noted, "the function of reason is to promote the art of living." Hume concurred years earlier: "Be a philosopher, but above all, be a man." Our philosophical maps will not replace living, nor should it be desired that they do so. We are left with knowledge as an experience and theory: as a way of talking about that experience, of re-creating them, and of seeking to construct a world around those experiences which we have deemed to be meaningful and better.
If we follow sociologist Simmel's (1950) work on secrets and on dyad and triads, some interesting things begin to emerge. Science has always desired public truths. But Simmel's work maintained that intimacy takes place in secret spaces away from public scrutiny. It is the dyadic unit closing itself off from the public that is the basis of our intimacy. Those experiences which we value most take place "behind closed doors"' --away from the larger social context.
If our most meaningful experiences occur in "secret," then we cannot present them for public inspection in front of an open forum. We can testify to such experiences publicly, but the experience itself belongs to a more private sector. It is a tapping of the "secret springs" -- a collapsing of the boundaries between self and other that the larger common denominator reality of the group does not allow. The humanistic "truths"/values do not lend themselves to public enactments. They require space away room the larger conceptual reality. We may testify to them, bringing our knowledge of them to the conference table, and legislate from their values, but the experiences themselves belong to a "secret," intimate sphere. A humanistic epistemology demands that we operate with a philosophical basis that can be known, but not reduced and dissected.
The question we are asking is how to find a way of moving which does not dissect life to science. However, if we are going to develop an epistemology which is humanistic and is also successful, we must be wary of two of the more popular current retreats from this question.
The first is anti-intellectualism. This is the command to "get out of your head and into your feelings." It is the trap that humanistic psychology often embraces. Rationalism has skewed the world to an extent where feeling and intuitions have been treated as illegitimate sources of knowledge. The entire humanistic effort is to correct this. However, abandoning the intellectual mode -- thinking and talking -- is an overcompensation. There is a very real sense in which something does not exist unless we are able to talk about it. The feeling goes unrecognized or is irrelevant unless we can verbalize it. Finding a way of talking about the intuitive/feeling sphere is essential if we are not going to neglect it.
The Gestalt approach of trusting the process -- "getting into the moment" -- is incomplete without a way of visualizing the future and understanding the past. If we merely reify feelings and the moment without also utilizing intellectual constructs, we may be in the moment while others who are not in the moment may be manipulating us.
The second popular retreat, relativism-perspectivism, is more characteristic of the field of sociology. Humanistic efforts seek not value-free, relative knowledge but value-full perspective on humanity. If all knowledge claims are treated merely as a perspective (or ''just your opinion"), it becomes impossible to talk except as an amusement -- we become incapable of agreements and participation. Perspectivism allows us to have only viewpoints and not d vision. We are undergoing the "common" experience of being human and from this experience humanism would seek common knowledge of what we know: from this dialog, we agree upon the direction of our world and our commitments.
The Lessons of Science
For science to have remained for over 2,000 years, we must assume that it had much going for it. The anthropological-sociological school of functionalism (Radcliffe-Brown, 1952; Malinowski, 1945; Parsons, 1951) has taught us that we must understand how a component functions within social system. Science has certainly demonstrated d remarkable survival value. We must become aware of how science has actually been functioning. Its longevity certainly must be due to underscoring some crucial components of decision making and social functioning. If we are going to depart from scientific vision, then we must seriously ask: "what if the original scientific action was valuable?" and "what aspects do we need to retain?"
Carpenter (1970) taught us that much of the scientific, rational world view has been rendered obsolete. It no longer fulfills its original purpose. Science was formulated as an effort to find the truth -- an effort which the emerging paradigm has clearly declassified:
Every time you put a new technology around a society, the old technology becomes a junkyard. But from junkyards come new art. New art can be made by retrieving and reshaping junk. It is from the trash heap that you can see true forms because everything there is declassified (n.p.).
It is clear that we must de-classify and de-mystify science, but what aspects should be salvaged and what aspects should be allowed merely to decompose? If truth is not the key, then what parts of the scientific method actually are functioning in a different manner to enhance the human process?
Objectivity--Honest/Respect
The scientific value of objectivity might readily be translated to read honesty and respect. It represents an important technique for opening up a dialog and discussion. At times, one must get away from the process in order to see it. Sociologically, one must "take the role of the other." Objectivity stresses an effort to see what would happen if one did not assert his will. Fromm (1947) noted that objectivity really means respect.
Objectivity is not, as it is often implied in a false idea of 'scientific" objectivity, synonymous "detachment, with the absence of interest and care. Objectivity does not mean detachment, it means respect: that is, the ability not to distort and falsify things, persons, and oneself (p. 111). Objectivity is a distancing that allows one "to look at" (the literal meaning of the word "respect"). It means to respect the integrity and dynamics of what one is looking at. Objectivity, thus, does not mean to do away with values; but rather, not be trapped by biases that prevents one from seeing "other" as it really is. Objectivity is a distancing to obtain dialog and perspective. It is part of a process to open honest communication which respects and allows the articulation of each integrity.
The scientific objectivity asks: what would the world be like without our involvement? et, we know on another level that such d perspective doesn't exist. e world does not exist separate from the human. Human purpose and consciousness are intertwined with everything. Objectivity is a distancing mechanism to understand the not-I and the non-human. We abstract -- pull away -- to gain new perspective and understanding. But in "truth," the abstracting is part of the process that then must be re-united in dialog. Sometimes one must get away -- become uninvolved -- to see. Culkin (Carpenter, 1970, n.p.) wrote, "we don't know who discovered water, but it certainly wasn't a fish." We become immersed in our environment and can see only by abstracting. But we can no more live in our abstracted, objective world than d fish can live out of water. We abstract to see, gain new perspective, and re-enter the conversation.
It is a twofold process. Buber (1957 wrote:
The principle of human life is not simple, but twofold, being built up in d twofold movement which is of such d kind that the one movement is the presupposition of the other. I propose to call the first movement 'the primal setting at a distance' and the second 'entering into relation . . . . It must be firmly maintained that the first creates the presupposition for the second -- not its source, but its presupposition. With the appearance of the first, therefore, nothing more than room for the second is given. It is only at this point that the real history of the spirit begins (p. 97).
Objectivity is dialectic. If we do not realize that objectivity is a prelude to re-entering dialog, then we reify one pole of the process. Objectivity is but a step to re-entering the process. We cannot live in our objectified world. Objectivity does not mean this any more than respect means leaving a person alone forever. It is the ability to subordinate biases to the perspective of "from where I stand . . . I seeÓ It is the honest testimony to our perspective, and the ability to entertain and understand the other perspective which is valued. It is this honesty which allows for dialog and the reaching of mutual conclusions. This is akin to Aristotle's idea of friendship: that scholarship was | d way of functioning as friends when ordinary circumstances of time and space might have prevented it. Aristotle saw scholarship as a way of approximating the honest dialog of friendship: of seeing how the Other felt and perceived, and how indeed one might have functioned in the same way given a similar perspective. Aristotle maintained that this way of knowing together (Aristotelian friendship) was the core and that the scientific effort must always take d back-seat. This is also similar to Jourard's (1971) notion of The Transparent Self which he saw as a precondition to intimacy. It is the ability to reveal which is important. This is what is really valued by the so-called objectivity: the willingness to disclose and allow that disclosure to enter into process with another human being. "Objectivity" allows us to take off our values for a moment. However, it is not so it is not so much an attempt to remove ourselves from values as it is an attempt to see past them. It is not value-relativity which is desired, but an ability to look at our own values (i.e., an attempt to be "objective" about our own values/perspectives) -- put them in a larger perspective. "Objectivity" represents a step towards trust -- and a willingness to open up the process of our own conclusion-formation.
Cultural relativity does not mean objectivity as is so often translated. It does not mean that one should function without values. Instead, it is the insight that our own perspectives arise from our (cultural) values, and the invitation to see past them: a call to an awareness and an honesty about our own perspective. Cultural relativity might be interpreted to mean not the value-neutrality of science, but a commitment to understand and appreciate, i.e., to suspend judgment long enough to see. Such cultural relativity frees us from socialized cultural biases and allows us to see what is occurring. It need not be a prohibition from making decisions and forming opinions after one has understood the situation.
Honesty is the key here. It allows us to retain the crucial aspects of the value of objectivity without forcing us into a prison of neutrality. It allows us to make our value perspectives transparent and enter into dialog without hedging our ability to make fully human decisions.
Agreement, Argument
Science and its method have proven to be an effective way of settling arguments: of foregoing the sword in favor of the pen. What is at work here is the trusting and commitment to a process of negotiation. It is the decision to commit disputes to arbitration and the agreement to follow a particular method that is critical, not that the particular arbitrator has been the scientific method. A commitment to arbitration and an agreement of a different nature (e.g., humanistic) would be just as effective.
Becker (1968) summarized the problem of the social disciplines quite nicely:
The founding of a science is never a cognitive problem alone: it is always inseparably a moral problem, a problem of gaining broad agreement to act on the basis of a theory . . . .
In the human sciences the problem of gaining wide loyalty to a paradigm is no different than in any other science . . . . Only, a subtle new factor magnifies the problem immensely, and gives it entirely new proportions: in the human sciences it is sharpened to an extreme degree, because the agreement cannot be disguised as an objective scientific problem . . . in the natural and physical sciences, paradigm agreement looks like a matter of option for an objectively compelling theory . . . . in the human sciences, the same kind of option for a compelling theory looks unashamedly like a wholly moral option, because of the frankly moral nature of its subject matter . . . .
Paradigm choice, in sum, in the human sciences, differs in no way from that of the other sciences except that the willful, moral nature of the option cannot be disguised . . . (p. 362). Italics Original]
It is here that the work of Erich Fromm is crucial. Fromm squarely addresses the question of where to begin our agreements. What is so remarkable about his thesis is that he brings the moral question of values to center stage. In a time when most in the social "sciences" ere treating values as somehow illegitimate and striving to keep them closeted, Fromm comes right through the front door asking where we want to rally our values and choices.
Throughout Fromm's career, the exact wording of his recommended value options change from individual productiveness (1947), to aliveness (1957), to the unfolding of potentials (1968), but there is always the same basic theme: the emphasis that since our initial values determine our future steps, we should begin by embracing those components which make man human. Perhaps, Fromm's work was premature for the age in which he lived, but it is a mark of his sophistication and genius that he asks us directly: "where do we wish to begin our agreement?," and then proceeds to address the answer. The commitment to begin our agreements is critical. Becker (1968, p. 361), in summarizing the work of Thomas Kuhn, stated that "the theory that finally wins support is the one that is most compelling. In other words, a theory is a persuasive, propagandistic symbolic device that wins loyalty in the field." Yet, with the social disciplines,
. . . laws of human nature can never be complete . . . . The problem for morality is always this: how much of the picture is necessary to command agreed action? . . . Sociologists should no longer imagine that it suffices 'to do' science; that in order to have a science of man, they need only work piling up data, and trying to 'tease out' social laws for eventual use. They may turn their backs on a paradigm . . . but they cannot shun an active option for man as an end. If they continue to do so, they will not have any science. The reason is simply that the science of man is an ideal-typical science, or -- there is no science of man (Becker, 1968, p. 361). Fromm enters the picture by asking us to address ourselves to the question of ideals and which values we hold central to our agreement. Physical science has merely masked the problem and smuggled in values under the rhetoric of a method while pretending value neutrality. Yet their method of agreement, and accountable arbitration to that agreement, has proven to be a powerful tool which we can readily recycle from the scientific wasteland. (At a later point in this work, I will argue that the concept of synergy provides an ideal framework for the basis of such an agreement within the social disciplines . . . and that Ruth Benedict was right in intuitively choosing synergy as the first concept to emerge after cultural relativity.)
Practical-Survival
Above all, the scientific world view and method have proven to have practical applications. Unrelated to questions of their legitimacy or accuracy, the technology which has been produced has proven powerful in its scope and effect. The method of agreement within science and the meanings generated from such an attempt gave us a range of technologies which did not find the truth but actually altered the nature of the world that science proposed to study.
The "weight definition" (Poincare) under which science first split with philosophy and generated techniques, proved to have far reaching practical implications. By agreeing to all operate toward the world according to weight definitions (i.e., the "atomic" weight of "atoms'') scientists were able to accomplish practical tasks. As Wittgenstein had said, this in no way says that the world is really such and such a way, but "only that it can be described in a certain way." That this strategy would actually prove to have practical applications was a boon that the early scientists had not anticipated.
There is, however, no reason why the technology gained from science cannot be incorporated into a humanistic vision. Indeed, this was Comte's (Becker, 1968) vision: that art would reign over science. Scientific metaphors need not be taken as truth any more than any other mnemonic device for remembering. They are no more intrinsic to the nature of reality than "very good boy does fine" is intrinsic to music (e.g., the mnemonic device for the lines of the musical staff: E-G-B-D-F.) They are tools, but they are no more all-purpose tools than any other tool. To use them outside very limited frames of reference would be like using a chain saw to carve a turkey . . . or fix the plumbing.
Scientific assumptions do not need to be mass reality. Techniques can be used for information and starting points as opposed to knowledge and finale. To deal with the world mechanistically has practical advantage at times. This need not then become world view.
We must be aware of the grammar and consequences of our techniques. The techniques of science should be applied appropriately. The mechanistic metaphor has proven its worth, but we are undoubtedly living in an age where it has run its course. There is no need to crush any more areas down its jaws. Human beings are not machines, and to further expand the scientific vision endangers life itself.
Even in areas of medicine and chemistry, the human elements are beginning to be recognized as categorically different from the scientific apparatus. Holistic medicine and the role of circumstance and the mind in illness are being recognized. The chemist is also reconsidering the human import of research and asking if perhaps some ''discoveries" should not be pursued.
There is no reason we cannot retain the practical advantage given to us from the past centuries of scientific research. The development of techniques in itself is perfectly appropriate -- but a humanistic approach would seek to place these techniques in perspective.
The perspective is simply that material techniques are a means rather than ends. They are resources which can be used to create the better life. But we must not lose sight of the ends.
Doubt-Testing
Viewed at its most fundamental level, the criteria of doubt and testing are simply a call for awareness, or if you will, a mandate that the scientist be "street-wise." It is a response to the problem of the "con-artist" or the "trickster.'' It is an effort to make our theories "non-naive." However, the invitation to such honest suspicion need not destroy our ability to trust. There are always two possible uses of language. The first is to say something. The second is symbolic manipulation for control -- i.e., ideology. As Simmel has taught us, with the invention of language it is possible to make d statement, but it also becomes possible to lie (i.e., a misstatement). To admit the possibility of the second need not destroy the possibility of the former.
If we only construct our methods to detect the lie, we drastically alter the possibility of sincerity. 'here are we capable of then letting our guard down? In social relations, we often make the distinction between enemies and friends for such purposes. Despite the advantages of knowledge that comes from guardedly competing with enemies, there is also a type of knowledge which comes through intimacy and friendship. If we construct our methods only with the image of the insincere stranger in mind, we destroy our ability to understand and experience the knowledge and insights of intimacy. Modern science finds itself in a corollary situation. Doubt and testing might easily be changed to read: the criteria of non-naive awareness and periodic accounting. Continual doubt and testing is in itself paranoid and represents an inability to trust. It also eliminates much of what is important in a humanistic perspective from our view.
Experiment--Exploration
The scientific method of experimentation might be more aptly recycled as exploration. The alienation of artificialness is useful as a means of "play" -- the creation of mock settings, free from more serious consequences, where we can discover.
The exploration of such safe places where we can call "time-out" from the world are essential for creativity. They allow us to try out new things, replay particularly interesting phenomena, and further develop our ideas. It is the artificial, playful nature of the experiment as exploration which is its most important feature.
The carefully controlled experiment where we rigorously manipulate one variable and then another, is not the only type of experiment. The call to "experiment with out lives" is a challenge . . . to explore. The so-called human experiment is not an attempt to resign ourselves to carefully trying out ever conceivable Skinner 80x for the rest of our duration. It is a commitment to support exploration.
The most significant experiments of mankind were by no means the contrived carefully controlled variety that we read about in research design textbooks. They were filled with intuition and playfulness. There is doubtlessly a place for the rigorously controlled experiment, but it is not the pinnacle at the end of the line of research as is so often claimed. This is the stuff of routine science (Kuhn, 1964) where wonder has been replaced by drudgery. The most significant "experiments" will always take place simply from a commitment of the society to support exploration and play.
Common Purpose
The banner of science has allowed us to form agreements about what the world was like and then enact that vision. The commitment to an idea was always rapidly converted into a commitment to an ideal. Our assumptions about the nature of truth have then been followed in such a way that we have envisioned a society and world in keeping with those agreements. The banner of "finding the truth" gave us a common direction.
What if instead of choosing the value of "the truth," we had chosen to build upon the value of ''the good?" What would the world have looked like , 2000 years later if we had chosen a banner of agreement which focused upon synergy, love and magic -- the humanistic ethos? Two thousand years ago, it was deemed that questions of how to "make the good" were too sticky. However, the pursuit of "the truth" has not only proven slippery -- when finally pinned down 2,000 years later -- but also a dead end. Synergy perhaps forms an ideal way to talk about the idea of the good and bring it to the pinnacle of our twentieth century conversations. The decision of our commitment and our shared vision revolves around where to start. This is what the journey to find the truth has revealed to us: The premise becomes the conclusion. What would happen if we were to start with love and magic? What if we were to explore what we know of them?
You become what you behold, penned William Blake. Centuries later anthropologist Edmund Carpenter summarized the power of culture as They became what they beheld. Science tells us that we shape the world. W hat the truth is depends upon where and how we look.
To opt for a theory of human ills is not only to opt for the kind of person one is going to have to pay deference to professionally; it is also to opt potentially for the kind of world one is going to wake up in, the kinds of human beings that one will have to come across on the street. To opt for a particular theory of human ills is very much like falling in love in strictest sense: it is to opt for the presence of a certain kind of being in the world, and hence for a certain kind world (Becker, 1968, p. 364). [Italics Original]
Love is our choice, as Fromm so repeatedly told us. There are limits, but we choose our directions. Do we choose limited, fixed, version of humanity contained by science or do we choose the alive, active, productive version of humanism? Perhaps the following story illustrates the point and the differences between science and humanism:
This old man was very wise, and he could answer questions which were almost impossible for people to answer, so some people went to him one day, two young people, and said, 'We're going to trick this guy today. We're going to catch a bird, and we're going to carry it to this old man. And we're going to ask him 'This that we hold in our hands today, is it alive or is it dead?' If he says 'dead,' we're going to turn it loose and let it fly away. But if he says 'Alive,' we're going to crush it.' So they walked up to the old man, and they said 'This that we hold in our hands today, is it alive or is it dead?' He looked at the young people and smiled. And he said, 'It's in your hands' (Hammer, 1971, n.p.).
Humanism seeks to find a framework in which life can move. Science merely constructs a framework irrespective of the human.
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