The Place of Science in Modern Civilisation, and Other EssaysVeblen, Thorstein
Philosophy
The Place of Science in Modern Civilisation, and Other Essays
Veblen, Thorstein
Economics; Science
It may be mentioned in passing, as a detail lying perhaps afield, yet
not devoid of significance for latter-day economic speculation, that
this elimination of personality, and so of teleological content, from
the sequence of events, and its increasing imputation to the conduct of
the human agent, is incident to a growing resort to an apprehension of
phenomena in terms of process rather than in terms of outcome, as was
the habit in earlier schemes of knowledge. On this account the
categories employed are, in a gradually increasing degree, categories of
process,--"dynamic" categories. But categories of process applied to
conduct, to discretionary action, are teleological categories: whereas
categories of process applied in the case of a sequence where the
members of the sequence are not conceived to be charged with discretion,
are, by the force of this conception itself, non-teleological,
quantitative categories. The continuity comprised in the concept of
process as applied to conduct is consequently a spiritual, teleological
continuity: whereas the concept of process under the second head, the
non-teleological sequence, comprises a continuity of a quantitative,
causal kind, substantially the conservation of energy. In its turn the
growing resort to categories of process in the formulation of knowledge
is probably due to the epistemological discipline of modern mechanical
industry, the technological exigencies of which enforce a constant
recourse to the apprehension of phenomena in terms of process, differing
therein from the earlier forms of industry, which neither obtruded
visible mechanical process so constantly upon the apprehension nor so
imperatively demanded an articulate recognition of continuity in the
processes actually involved. The contrast in this respect is still more
pronounced between the discipline of modern life in an industrial
community and the discipline of life under the conventions of status and
exploit that formerly prevailed.
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