Slife and Williams put the matter thus: “Prior to the formulation of any method of study, such as science, people already have an idea of what truth is…. Method is then designed as the best way to get at the truth. (Slife 181)” Or as Spengler (The Decline of the West) says, the inquiry is bound up in the goal of investigation so that “question and answer are one.” This has world-shattering consequences for those investigators bold enough to accept the hermeneutical reality of their work while still pressing forward towards the end of a fuller understanding. When taken to its full implications (as with Spengler), the hermeneutical viewpoint explodes the notion of a historically linear procession of science towards ever greater levels of precision and truthfulness. The linear view of science is the one described by Popper as a series of elimination of false theories, bringing us ever closer to the supposed ‘true’ theories that exist objectively, and would continue to exist absent our presence to observe them. Of course, Popper’s science is one where falsification is possible, but as Slife and Williams have ably demonstrated, falsification is not possible in any real (and not abstract) sense. From a hermeneutical perspective, we are forced to realize that different men have different ideas of truth and thus will have different, though equally internally valid, sciences.

Spengler attempts to explain the science of the Classical Greeks in this light. Their underlying idea or paradigm of truth was different than ours in at least two fundamental ways. First, their experience of time was what Spengler calls ahistorical. Whereas we view the Present as a line (with no width) between the Past and Future, they saw the Present as the entire plane of existence, encompassing everything and containing all meaning. Hence there were no past, present or future verb tenses in classical Greek but rather inflexions of the verb based on the nature of the action (continuous, completed or without any reference to progression). The calendar and clock would have been mere novelties to them, not conveying the overwhelmingly real (for us) importance with which we treat them. A question that would baffle the best minds of today, such as “where did the universe come from,” would pose no difficulty to the Greek because it was of no importance to him—it did not fit in with his world-view and so he could simply ignore it (or answer that the world had always been). Remember—question and answer are bound up inextricably, so that a question that means everything to us, could convey nothing to them. Since the entire premise of statistical causality is based on our understanding of a linear flow of time from past causes to future effects, all of our great scientific works based thereupon would be as trumpets and cymbals to them—incomprehensible because spoken in a different language.

The second major difference in Greek thought was their conception of space, which they thought of as finite and contained—as in that which was immediately present to them (as with time). To use Spengler’s language, numbers were conceived of as magnitudes, conveying a real sense of visible dimension—immediately available to the senses. Here, the essence of numbers is Proportion and this is the foundation of two-dimensional Euclidean geometry. So, for the Greek, “¾” symbolized three lines of equal length arranged end to end as compared to four lines of the same length arranged end to end. Accordingly, the Greeks only “discovered” whole, positive and non-zero numbers because those were the only numbers that made any type of sense to them. They knew of π as a proportion involving circles, but would not dream of treating it like a number outside of its particular (circular) real-world circumstance—even less of calculating it out as an infinitely long series of fractions (3.1417…). Similarly, they knew of the square root of two as the length of the diagonal of a square with sides of one, but not as an abstract number existing in an austere mathematical vacuum.

So what of the scientific study of behavior, as it concerns our culture, society and politics? I remain unconvinced that a nomothetic, rule-seeking approach to the social sciences is beneficial. Consider the case of economics. Adam Smith deduced the fundamental principles that lead to economic maximization more than two hundred years ago with his doctrine of the “invisible hand” guiding economies towards their optimal state under free markets. Two hundred years of subsequent statistical analysis has, at best, confirmed Smith’s original ideas (following the Chicago School), and at worst, muddled the debate (following any of the other New Schools), creating an air of confusion, uncertainty and over-regulation that pervades modern economic policy making.
Next, consider psychology. What has it profited under this regime of positivistic analysis? Neuroscience has given us much in the field of biology but is far less fruitful in the study of psychology proper—the psyche or soul. Did Socrates or Shakespeare know the human soul any less than the professional psychological scientists of today? Here again, as before, we see confusion as the result of the positivistic treatment of human investigation—“Is it my fault I’m obese, or depressed, or an addict? Or is it my body chemistry’s fault and these pills for X will make me healthy?”

Finally, consider the vitally important field of political science. Here the rotten fruits of strict positivism are laid bare for everyone with eyes to see. An unshakable faith in statistical causality, of itself, necessitates the the impulse to control. This is Skinner’s delusion—if everything is controlled anyhow, why not have someone enlightened (the Scientist for Skinner) control everything. We learn from Porter, and it should come as no surprise, that William Petty, the father of ‘political arithmetic’ and the statistical approach to public policy, was the student of the great authoritarian and Statist, Hobbes and his magnum opus, The Leviathan.

Idioteque