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
[4] A physiological conception of society, or of the community, had been
employed before,--_e.g._, by the Physiocrats,--and such a concept was
reached also by English speculators--_e.g._, Herbert Spencer--during
Roscher's lifetime; but these physiological conceptions of society are
reached by a different line of approach from that which led up to the
late-Hegelian physiological or biological conception of human culture as
a spiritual structure and process. The outcome is also a different one,
both as regards the use made of the analogy and as regards the
theoretical results reached by its aid.
It may be remarked, by the way, that neo-Hegelianism, of the "Left,"
likewise gave rise to a theory of a self-determining cultural
exfoliation; namely, the so-called "Materialistic Conception of History"
of the Marxian socialists. This Marxian conception, too, had much of a
physiological air; but Marx and his coadjutors had an advantage over
Roscher and his following, in that they were to a greater extent
schooled in the Hegelian philosophy, instead of being uncritical
receptacles of the Romantic commonplaces left by Hegelianism as a
residue in popular thought. They were therefore more fully conscious of
the bearing of their postulates and less naive in their assumptions of
self-sufficiency.
[5] _E.g._, in his controversy with Treitschke. See _Grundfragen der
Socialpolitik und der Volkswirtschaftslehre_, particularly pp. 24, 25.
[6] _E.g._, _Grundriss_, pp. 225, 409, 411.
INDUSTRIAL AND PECUNIARY EMPLOYMENTS[1]
For purposes of economic theory, the various activities of men and
things about which economists busy themselves were classified by the
early writers according to a scheme which has remained substantially
unchanged, if not unquestioned, since their time. This scheme is the
classical three-fold division of the factors of production under Land,
Labor, and Capital. The theoretical aim of the economists in discussing
these factors and the activities for which they stand has not remained
the same throughout the course of economic discussion, and the
three-fold division has not always lent itself with facility to new
points of view and new purposes of theory, but the writers who have
shaped later theory have, on the whole, not laid violent hands on the
sacred formula. These facts must inspire the utmost reserve and
circumspection in any one who is moved to propose even a subsidiary
distinction of another kind between economic activities or agents. The
terminology and the conceptual furniture of economics are complex and
parti-colored enough without gratuitous innovation.
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