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 is not unusual to say that the primitive systems of knowledge are
constructed on animistic lines; that animistic sequence is the rule to
which the facts are broken in. This seems to be true, if "animism" be
construed in a sufficiently naive and inchoate sense. But this is not
the whole case. In their higher generalisations, in what Powell calls
their "sophiology," it appears that the primitive peoples are guided by
animistic norms; they make up their cosmological schemes, and the like,
in terms of personal or quasi-personal activity, and the whole is thrown
into something of a dramatic form. Through the early cosmological lore
runs a dramatic consistency which imputes something in the way of
initiative and propensity to the phenomena that are to be accounted for.
But this dramatisation of the facts, the accounting for phenomena in
terms of spiritual or quasi-spiritual initiative, is by no means the
whole case of primitive men's systematic knowledge of facts. Their
theories are not all of the nature of dramatic legend, myth, or
animistic life-history, although the broader and more picturesque
generalisations may take that form. There always runs along by the side
of these dramaturgic life-histories, and underlying them, an obscure
system of generalisations in terms of matter-of-fact. The system of
matter-of-fact generalisations, or theories, is obscurer than the
dramatic generalisations only in the sense that it is left in the
background as being less picturesque and of less vital interest, not in
the sense of being less familiar, less adequately apprehended, or less
secure. The peoples of the lower cultures "know" that the broad scheme
of things is to be explained in terms of creation, perhaps of
procreation, gestation, birth, growth, life and initiative; and these
matters engross the attention and stimulate speculation. But they know
equally well the matter of fact that water will run down hill, that two
stones are heavier than one of them, that an edge-tool will cut softer
substances, that two things may be tied together with a string, that a
pointed stick may be stuck in the ground, and the like. There is no
range of knowledge that is held more securely by any people than such
matters of fact; and these are generalisations from experience; they are
theoretical knowledge, and they are a matter of course. They underlie
the dramatical generalisations of the broad scheme of things, and are so
employed in the speculations of the myth-makers and the learned.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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