10. The Psychopathology of Scientism

10 The Psychopathology of Scientism LUDWIG VON BERTALANFFY 10 The Epistemological Basis Scientism and its epistemological root, positivism, either in the original form given to it by Comte and his contemporaries or as modem logical positivism, are not an invention of the scien tists. As Hayek 1 has admirably stated: From Francis Bacon ... to August Comte, and the "physicalists" of our own day, the claims for the exclusive virtues of the specific methods employed by the natural sciences were mostly 'advanced by men whose right to speak on behalf of the scientists were not above suspicion ... The enthusiasm for physicism (it is now called physi calism) and the use of "physical language," the attempt to "unify science" and to make it the basis of morals ... the desire to organize the work of others, particularly by editing a great encyclopedia and the wish to plan life in general on scientific lines are all present [in Saint-Simon's philosophy].

The present writer feels entitled to some criticism because he himself came from the Vienna Circle, having been a pupil of its founder, M. Schlick. The criticism proffered by Hayek may be 202 The Psychopathology of Scientism 203 supplem.ented by stating the fact that scientific research rarely follows the rigid commandments of the positivists. Many scientific developments started with "metaphysical" problems which, ac cording to logical positivism, should have been discarded as pseudo problems at the beginning, the theory of the atom, starting with the wild speculations of Democritus and Lucretius, being an example. Even mechanics, the prototype of exact science, was freed from metaphysics and theology only slowly in a period ex tending from Kepler to Lagrange. Kepler himself derived his laws, not from solid principles of scientific research, but from unbridled neoplatonic speculations. Physical notions like "force"