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
Even this meager account of the scheme of life that characterises a
regime of status should serve to indicate what is its disciplinary
effect in shaping habits of thought, and therefore in shaping the
habitual criteria of knowledge and of reality. A culture whose
institutions are a framework of invidious comparisons implies, or rather
involves and comprises, a scheme of knowledge whose definitive standards
of truth and substantiality are of an animistic character; and, the more
undividedly the canons of status and ceremonial honor govern the conduct
of the community, the greater the facility with which the sequence of
cause and effect is made to yield before the higher claims of a
spiritual sequence or guidance in the course of events. Men consistently
trained to an unremitting discrimination of honor, worth, and personal
force in their daily conduct, and to whom these criteria afford the
definitive ground of sufficiency in cooerdinating facts for the purposes
of life, will not be satisfied to fall short of the like definitive
ground of sufficiency when they come to cooerdinate facts for the
purposes of knowledge simply. The habits formed in unfolding his
activity in one direction, under the impulse of a given interest, assert
themselves when the individual comes to unfold his activity in any other
direction, under the impulse of any other interest. If his last resort
and highest criterion of truth in conduct is afforded by the element of
personal force and invidious comparison, his sense of substantiality or
truth in the quest of knowledge will be satisfied only when a like
definitive ground of animistic force and invidious comparison is
reached. But when such ground is reached he rests content and pushes the
inquiry no farther. In his practical life he has acquired the habit of
resting his case on an authentic deliverance as to what is absolutely
right. This absolutely right and good final term in conduct has the
character of finality only when conduct is construed in a ceremonial
sense; that is to say, only when life is conceived as a scheme of
conformity to a purpose outside and beyond the process of living. Under
the regime of status this ceremonial finality is found in the concept of
worth or honor. In the religious domain it is the concept of virtue,
sanctity, or tabu. Merit lies in what one is, not in what one does. The
habit of appeal to ceremonial finality, formed in the school of status,
goes with the individual in his quest of knowledge, as a dependence upon
a similarly authentic norm of absolute truth,--a similar seeking of a
final term outside and beyond the range of knowledge.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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