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and effective way out of these evils is steady and systematic effort to develop that effective intelligence named scientific method in the case of human transactions.
Our theorizing on this point cannot be said to have had much effect. The relative importance of the consequences of events which are of the nature of theorizing, and of events which are so overt as to force themselves upon general attention is well exhibited in what has followed upon the fission of the atom. Its consequences are so impressive that there is not only a clamor, approaching a Babel, about the utility and disutility of physical sciences, but some aspects of the control of science in the interest of social well-being have entered the arena of politics,—of governmental discussion and action. In evidence, it is enough to point to the controversy going on in the Congress of the United Nations as these pages are written as to civilian and military participation in control, and in the United States as to the best method in general of managing the needed control.3
Aspects of the moral problem of the status of physical science have been with us for a long time. But the consequences of the physical sciences, though immeasurably important to industry and through industry in society generally, failed to obtain the kind of observation that would bring the conduct and state of science into the specifically political field. The use of these sciences to increase the destructiveness of war was brought to such a sensationally obvious focus with the splitting of the atom that the political issue is now with us, whether or no.
There are those who not only insist upon taking an exclusively moralistic view of science but who also insist upon doing so in an extremely one-sided way.4 They put the blame for the present evils on physical science as if it were a causal entity per se, and not a human product which does what prevailing human institutions exact of it. They then use the evils that are apparent as a ground for the subjection of science to what they take to be moral ideals and standards, in disregard of the fact, hortatory preaching aside, there is no method of accomplishing this subordination save setting up some institution equipped with absolute authority—the sure way to restore the kind of conflict that once marked the attempt of the Church to control scientific inquiry. The net outcome of their position, were it adopted, would not be the subordination of science to ideal moral aims, in disregard of political or public interests, but the production of political despotism with all the moral evils which attend that mode of social organization.
Science, being a human construction, is as much subject to human use as any other technological development. But, unfortunately, “use” includes misuse and abuse. Holding science to be an entity by itself, as is done in most of the current distinctions between science as “pure” and “applied,” and then blaming it for social evils, like those of economic maladjustment and destruction in war, with a view to subordinating it to moral ideals, is of no positive benefit. On the contrary, it distracts us from using our knowledge and our most competent methods of observation in the performance of the work they are able to do. This work is the promotion of effective foresight of the consequence of social policies and institutional arrangements.
John Dewey
Hubbards, Nova Scotia
July 22, 1946
1
Search for the Public
If one wishes to realize the distance which may lie between “facts” and the meaning of facts, let one go to the field of social discussion. Many persons seem to suppose that facts carry their meaning along with themselves on their face. Accumulate enough of them, and their interpretation stares out at you. The development of physical science is thought to confirm the idea. But the power of physical facts to coerce belief does not reside in the bare phenomena. It proceeds from method, from the technique of research and calculation. No one is ever forced by just the collection of facts to accept a particular theory of their meaning, so long as one retains intact some other doctrine by which he can marshal them. Only when the facts are allowed free play for the suggestion of new points of view is any significant conversion of conviction as to meaning possible. Take away from physical science its laboratory apparatus and its mathematical technique, and the human imagination might run wild in its theories of interpretation even if we suppose the brute facts to remain the same.
In any event, social philosophy exhibits an immense gap between facts and doctrines. Compare, for example, the facts of politics with the theories which are extant regarding the nature of the state. If inquirers confine themselves to observed phenomena, the behavior of kings, presidents, legislators, judges, sheriffs, assessors and all other public officials, surely a reasonable consensus is not difficult to attain. Contrast with this agreement the differences which exist as to the basis, nature, functions and justification of the state, and note the seemingly hopeless disagreement. If one asks not for an enumeration of facts, but for a definition of the state, one is plunged into controversy, into a medley of contradictory clamors. According to one tradition, which claims to derive from Aristotle, the state is associated and harmonized life lifted to its highest potency; the state is at once the keystone of the social arch and is the arch in its wholeness. According to another view, it is just one of many social institutions, having a narrow but important function, that of arbiter in the conflict of other social units.1 Every group springs out of and realizes a positive human interest; the church, religious values; guilds, unions and corporations, material economic interests, and so on. The state, however, has no concern of its own; its purpose is formal, like that of the leader of the orchestra who plays no instrument and makes no music, but who serves to keep other players who do produce music in unison with one another. Still a third view has it that the state is organized oppression, at once a social excrescence, a parasite and a tyrant. A fourth is that it is an instrument more or less clumsy for keeping individuals from quarreling too much with one another.
Confusion grows when we enter subdivisions of these different views and the grounds offered for them. In one philosophy, the state is the apex and completion of human association, and manifests the highest realization of all distinctively human capacities. The view had a certain pertinency when it was first formulated. It developed in an antique city-state, where to be fully a free man and to be a citizen participating in the drama, the sports, the religion and the government of the community were equivalent affairs. But the view persists and is applied to the state of to-day. Another view coördinates the state with the church (or a variant view slightly subordinates it to the latter) as the secular arm of Deity maintaining outward order and decorum among men. A modern theory idealizes the state and its activities by borrowing the conceptions of reason and will, magnifying them till the state appears as the objectified manifestation of a will and reason which far transcend the desires and purposes which can be found among individuals or assemblages of individuals.
We are not concerned, however, with writing either an cyclopedia or history of political doctrines. So we pause with these arbitrary illustrations of the proposition that little common ground has been discovered between the factual phenomena of political behavior and the interpretation of the meaning of these phenomena. One way out of the impasse is to consign the whole matter of meaning and interpretation to political philosophy as distinguished from political science. Then it can be pointed out that futile speculation is a companion of all philosophy. The moral is to drop all doctrines of this kind overboard, and stick to facts verifiably ascertained.
The remedy urged is simple and attractive. But it is not possible to employ it. Political facts are not outside human desire and judgment. Change men’s estimate of the value of existing political agencies and forms, and the latter change more or less. The different theories which mark political philosophy do not grow up externally to the facts which they aim to interpret; they are amplifications of selected factors among those facts. Modifiable and altering human habits sustain and generate political phenomena. These habits are not wholly informed by reasoned purpose and deliberate choice—far from it—but they are more or less amenable to them. Bodies of men are constantly engaged in attacking and trying to change some political habits, while other bodies of men are actively supporting and justifying them. It is mere pretense, then, to suppose that we can stick by the de facto, and not raise at some points the question of de jure: the question of by what right, the question of legitimacy. And such a question has a way