Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
REFERENCES
Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2147775?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/
info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Academy of Political Science and Wiley are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Political
Science Quarterly.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 129.96.252.188 on Wed, 20 Jan 2016 00:51:34 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
SocialScienceand the
of HubrAs
Collectivization
JOSEPH J. SPENGLER
Duke University
This content downloaded from 129.96.252.188 on Wed, 20 Jan 2016 00:51:34 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
2 | POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY
EarlyManifestationsof Hubris
While hubris is of ancient vintage, it was among the Greeks, antici-
pators of modern unfettered inquiry if not also of unfettered appli-
cation of the results of inquiry, that hubris found greatest condem-
nation. The hubris, or arrogant and unwarranted pride, of which
they wrote permeated mainly individual, not collective, behavior.
o Plato,Laws,III,69X.
7A. 0. Hirschman, Development Projects Observed (Washington, D. C.,
[19671),chap. i; Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History (London,1939), esp.
I-VI.
8 Cp. Bentley Glass, "Science: Endless Horizons or Golden Age," Science,
This content downloaded from 129.96.252.188 on Wed, 20 Jan 2016 00:51:34 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
OF HUBRIS |
SOCIALSCIENCEAND THE COLLECTIVIZATION 3
This content downloaded from 129.96.252.188 on Wed, 20 Jan 2016 00:51:34 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
4 1 POLITICALSCIENCEQUARTERLY
any wisdom, and all other men float about as shadows.... They
postulate causes . . . as if they had exclusive knowledge about the
secretsof nature,designerof elements,or as if theyvisitedus directly
from the councilof the gods"; and of the theologiansthat "they
drawexactpicturesof every part of hell, as though they had spent
many years in that region.... It is their claim that it is beyond the
station of sacreddiscourseto be obliged to adhereto the rules of
grammarians.... They sharethis honorwith most intellectuals."'5
Greek,Roman,medieval,and even early modernwritersfound
the ill effectsof hubristo be incidentin the mainuponthe excessively
arrogantindividual.Ill effectsweremorewidely incidentonly when
hubrisanimatedpoliticalor militaryleadersto overreachthemselves
and visit misfortuneupon their followers. Outside the military
realm,hubriscouldat firstbecomea sourceof misfortuneonly in the
area of theology, since theologianswere relativelynumerousand
identifiedwith the UniversalChurch,which in turn had behind it
the apparatusof the state; and they could on occasiondirectthis
apparatusagainst the welfareof the commonman, as they did in
the age of the Crusadesagainstthe Saracensand the worldof Islam.
At thattimescientistsstill hadtoo little skillas scientistsand,though
they sometimeswere organizedin guilds, too little collectivepower
to be drivenby hubristo generateharm.Only the Devil's Appren-
ticewas capablealongtheselines, andeven he was withouta hypo-
theticalcounterpartin the as yet uncultivatedsocial sciences.
Foundationsfor the emergenceof a "scientistichubris"began to
be laid within the centurysucceedingthe deathof Erasmus.Francis
Bacon,perhapsmorethanany otherwriter,developedtheview that
knowledgeis power and that sciencebestows power. A scientistic
hubriscouldnot, however,comeinto beinguntil the naturalsciences
and mathematicshad made great discoveriespossible and thus
playeda John-the-Baptist roleto a socialsciencestill in the prepartu-
ritionstage.Thesecriticaldiscoveriescamein the age and aftermath
of Newton,in a late eighteenth-andearlynineteenth-century France
thatlackedthe leaveninginfluenceof a Lockeanda Burke.Thelead-
ing productof this exuberance,the 1Acole Polytechnique,not merely
generatedinterestin science,engineering,and machinesas well as
confidencein the omnipotenceof pure scienceand the efficacyof
"5Erasmus, The Praise of Folly (1517), in John P. Dolan, ed., The Essential
Erasmus (New York, 1964), 142, 147.
This content downloaded from 129.96.252.188 on Wed, 20 Jan 2016 00:51:34 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
SOCIAL SCIENCE AND THE COLLECTIVIZATION OF HUBRIS | 5
PostclassicalDevelopments
Even in the late nineteenthcentury the place occupiedby social
sciencein the realm of sciencewas too unimpressiveto generate
hubrisat the individuallevel or make possibleits collectivization.
The changesthat took place in and after the closing years of this
century,thoughnot confinedto the UnitedStates,weremoreintense
and rapidhere than elsewhere.Americanexperiencethereforeepit-
omizesthe changesthat took place.It is correctto say that here, as
elsewhere,social scientists,among them economists,never on top,
were hardly on tap until shprtly before or during World War I.
Social scientistsdid, however,play a role in rising governmental
16F. A. Hayek, "The Source of the Scientific Hubris: L'Ecole Polytechnique,"
in The Counter-Revolution of Science (Glencoe, 1952), 105-i6, esp. 105, rr0, 112.
17 See the illuminating account in Hayek, Part 2. See also E. Halevy, The Era
This content downloaded from 129.96.252.188 on Wed, 20 Jan 2016 00:51:34 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
6 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY
This content downloaded from 129.96.252.188 on Wed, 20 Jan 2016 00:51:34 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
SOCIAL SCIENCE AND THE COLLECTIVIZATION OF HUBRIS | 7
thony Downs argues that many problems, especially urban ones, are social
rather than technological; Downs, "New Directions for Urban Research," Tech-
nology Review, LXXIII (1971), 26-35.
5 See Matthew Radom, The Social Scientist in American Industry (New
Brunswick, 1970); cp. this with D. C. Pelz and F. M. Andrews, Scientists in
Organizations (New York, 1966).
This content downloaded from 129.96.252.188 on Wed, 20 Jan 2016 00:51:34 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
8 | POLITICALSCIENCEQUARTERLY
and Social SciencesSurvey (Englewood Cliffs, i967-69) and prepared under the
auspices of the National Academy of Sciences and the Social Science Research
Council, has been issued recently. See also The Behavioraland Social Sciences.
Outlook and Needs (Englewood Cliffs, -969), issued jointly by the National
Academy of Sciences and the Social Science Research Council.
' Ibid., 312-13. On deceleration in the growth of markets for Ph.D.'s, see
A.M. Cartter, "Scientific Manpower for 1970-1985," Science, CLXXII, Apr. 9,
197L, pp. 132-40-
28Some of the problems are discussed in CommunicationSystem and Re-
sourcesin the BehavioralSciences,Publication 1575, National Academy of Sci-
ences (Washington, D. C., 1967). See also Bentley Glass, The Timely and the
Timeless (New York, 1970), and D.J. de Solla Price, Science Since Babylon
(New Haven, q96L).
This content downloaded from 129.96.252.188 on Wed, 20 Jan 2016 00:51:34 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
SOCIAL SCIENCE AND THE COLLECTIVIZATION OF HUBRIS I 9
HubrisEmerges:NaturalScience
Socialscience,economicsin particular,has benefitedgreatly,at least
until recently,fromthe pOst-1945aurawhichhas surroundednatu-
ral science.Never in its history has the kudos of science,together
with its support,and its self-confidence,been so great.Up to now,
therefore,sciencehas easily survivedthe growing hostility of the
once friendly intellectual,by now becomingangry at the alleged
misuse of scienceby some of those coming to Washingtonin the
Camelotinvasionof 1960 or disturbedat his own inabilityto fathom
or appreciatea "culture"narrowlypragmaticand in the pay of the
Leviathan.Sciencesurvives in part, of course,becauseits critics,
often contemptuousof those whom JosephKrafthas called "ordi-
nary Americans"and "middle America" (and intellectualshave
sometimes regarded as aspirants to a "pornutopia"),29have aroused
a reciprocal and offsetting contempt at the hands of the "common
man."
Growth of expenditure upon "research and development," much
of it inspired by Sputnik and thermonuclear competition (as evi-
denced by the fact that about one-half of this expenditure has been
defense-space related), may serve as an index of the increasing im-
portance attached to science, especially natural science and engi-
neering.30 This expenditure, essentially exclusive of outlay upon
capital, increased in the aggregate (in real terms) about 7.6 per cent
per year between 1955 and 1970, but with real outlay upon "basic"
research growing even faster, close to 10.5 per cent per year. Mean-
while, Gross National Product rose only about 3.4 per cent per year.
'See Kraft'sdiscussion of "intellectuals"in his column which appearedon
the DurhamSun's editorial page, Dec. 9, 1968. See also Arthur Koestler, The
Sleepwalkers (New York,1959).
30 The data presentedare taken or derived from U. S. Bureauof the Census,
This content downloaded from 129.96.252.188 on Wed, 20 Jan 2016 00:51:34 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
10 I POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY
This content downloaded from 129.96.252.188 on Wed, 20 Jan 2016 00:51:34 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
SOCIAL SCIENCE AND THE COLLECTIVIZATION OF HUBRIS I 11
The spacemenwho would escape the confines of the earth do not, of course,
find the greateroutlay uneconomic.
This content downloaded from 129.96.252.188 on Wed, 20 Jan 2016 00:51:34 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
12 I POLITICAL SClENCE QUARTERLY
HubrisEmerges:SocialScience
Hubrisbecomesa matterof concernonly insofaras its adversecon-
sequentsaffectothersthan the hubris-animatedsourceof these ef-
fects. Shouldthese effectsbe entirelyincidentupon their agent and
henceself-regarding,thereis no occasionfor publicconcern.Unfor-
tunately,hubrismay give rise to externalities,often predominantly
""Rolls-Royce:The Trap of TechnologicalPride,"Time, Feb. 22, 1971, pp.
84, 86. See also the article,"Aerospace,"in Time,91.
3 L. Lessing,"TheSenselessWar on Science,"Fortune,(Mar.197Q),88 ff. See
also Branscomb.
This content downloaded from 129.96.252.188 on Wed, 20 Jan 2016 00:51:34 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
SOCIAL SCIENCE AND THE COLLECTIVIZATION OF HUBRIS | 13
This content downloaded from 129.96.252.188 on Wed, 20 Jan 2016 00:51:34 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
14 | POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY
This content downloaded from 129.96.252.188 on Wed, 20 Jan 2016 00:51:34 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
SOCIAL SCIENCE AND THE COLLECTIVIZATION OF HUBRIS | 15
This content downloaded from 129.96.252.188 on Wed, 20 Jan 2016 00:51:34 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
16 | POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY
This content downloaded from 129.96.252.188 on Wed, 20 Jan 2016 00:51:34 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
SOCIAL SCIENCE AND THE-COLLECTIVIZATION OF HUBRIS I 17
This content downloaded from 129.96.252.188 on Wed, 20 Jan 2016 00:51:34 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
i8 I POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY
ControllingHubris
Guarding society against the evil effects of hubriscalls for corrective
action, particularly by social scientists themselves, since the recur-
rence of the adverse effects of unwise policies imputed to social sci-
entists could destroy confidence in their skills and thus deprive so-
ciety of what it badly needs. There is need for at least three courses
of action. The first need, now probably the least attainable of major
needs, consists in modification of the political structure. Decentrali-
zation of economic and political authority and decision-making
would be most effective. It would deprive hubris,wherever it devel-
" Ways, 66.
3 "Allen's Law," Time, Feb. 15, 1971, p. 14.
6' On such disregard,see E.J.Mishan, The Costs of Economic Growth (New
York,1967), and Mishan,WelfareEconomics(New York,1964).
' "Caught in the Middle," Barron's, Mar.
I, 1971, pp. i, 8.
This content downloaded from 129.96.252.188 on Wed, 20 Jan 2016 00:51:34 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
SOCIAL SCIENCE AND THE COLLECTIVIZATION OF HUBRIS I 19
This content downloaded from 129.96.252.188 on Wed, 20 Jan 2016 00:51:34 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
20 f POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY
This content downloaded from 129.96.252.188 on Wed, 20 Jan 2016 00:51:34 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
SOCIAL SCIENCE AND THE-COLLECTIVIZATION OF HUBRIS | 21
This content downloaded from 129.96.252.188 on Wed, 20 Jan 2016 00:51:34 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions