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
A further consideration enforces the like view. As the community
increases in size, the range of observation of the individuals in the
community also increases; and continually wider and more far-reaching
sequences of a mechanical kind have to be taken account of. Men have to
adapt their own motives to industrial processes that are not safely to
be construed in terms of propensity, predilection, or passion. Life in
an advanced industrial community does not tolerate a neglect of
mechanical fact; for the mechanical sequences through which men, at an
appreciable degree of culture, work out their livelihood, are no
respecters of persons or of will-power. Still, on all but the higher
industrial stages, the coercive discipline of industrial life, and of
the scheme of life that inculcates regard for the mechanical facts of
industry, is greatly mitigated by the largely haphazard character of
industry, and by the great extent to which man continues to be the prime
mover in industry. So long as industrial efficiency is chiefly a matter
of the handicraftsman's skill, dexterity, and diligence, the attention
of men in looking to the industrial process is met by the figure of the
workman, as the chief and characteristic factor; and thereby it comes to
run on the personal element in industry.
But, with or without mitigation, the scheme of life which men perforce
adopt under exigencies of an advanced industrial situation shapes their
habits of thought on the side of their behavior, and thereby shapes
their habits of thought to some extent for all purposes. Each individual
is but a single complex of habits of thought, and the same psychical
mechanism that expresses itself in one direction as conduct expresses
itself in another direction as knowledge. The habits of thought formed
in the one connection, in response to stimuli that call for a response
in terms of conduct, must, therefore, have their effect when the same
individual comes to respond to stimuli that call for a response in terms
of knowledge. The scheme of thought or of knowledge is in good part a
reverberation of the scheme of life. So that, after all has been said,
it remains true that with the growth of industrial organization and
efficiency there must, by selection and by adaptation, supervene a
greater resort to the mechanical or dispassionate method of apprehending
facts.
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