I was impressed with a Doctor of Science, Norman W. Walker who wrote ten books on the subject of health and nutrition. I contacted him, after I said a prayer and his book came into my hands...and it led to my getting rid of a rapidly-growing tumor. We corresponded from 1976 to 1985, when he died. He advised me on setting up a holistic center...and told me to keep the price affordable of any books I would write. He was selling his books for well under $10 back in the 1980s. I did not have a book published, until 1995, but when it was finished...I kept the price low, because of Dr. Walker. He acquired a great amount of knowledge in his many years of research...and he used it to benefit others. This is the way it should be! We need to share and enlighten others, when we have information that would be of benefit.
Perhaps Churchill said it best:”Experts on tap, not on top.” However, keeping experts in their proper place requires political leadership with intelligence and courage. Arguably, Governor de Santis showed this when he retained experts like Battacharia and Kuldorf and implemented their advice over the scientism consensus.
No need to refer to gods, science, etc. We need one honest person who will approve the Universal Code of Scientific Publication. Rule #1 will be: if your abstract deviates from your methods or description or conclusions, you are fired from the scientific circles for good. Rule #2: if your article merely duplicates precious publications and brings nothing new to the subject matter, ditto. Rule #3: if you took a single cent from the published study, ditto. People in the science circles enjoy enough non-financial (along with financial) benefits, there is no reason to multiply their revenues. Rule #4: no scientific work should ever be patented. All current patents should be cancelled. Four simple rules, and within a month the science will become a truly pure area.
Good start - but I would INSIST on modifying Rule #1 to start as 1A, followed by !B: "If your CONCLUSIONS are unjustified by the methods or description ...."
Savvy research professionals no longer even READ the Conclusions, just 1A, then draw their own Conclusions. They're tired of the "urge to conflate."
My view is that we have enough science for 5 millennia to come. We don’t need any more science or scientists. We should now spend a lot of time trying to understand what we’ve already got and how to use it.
IC engines still at 20-30% after 150 years of research and developments? ALL researchers in these facilities should be fired immediately and permanently. New minds are needed, with new visions.
Researchers and scientists in medicine clearly run away from patients. They don’t need patients, only computers. Who knows, a real, living patient may contradict their genius work…
Folks playing with the so called “space” are only good at exploding huge volumes of contaminants, all paid from public money. Since the start of the “space exploration”, we haven’t gone anywhere farther than our TV sets.
"Science for science's sake" indeed takes us off the cliff and into self-destructive madness that "Doctor" Josef Mengele monstrously inflicted on children and adults alike ... all in the name of playing God. "Research for research's sake" completely misses the point. Self-styled "smartest men in the lab" have nothing to do with the ancient and very holy practice of medicine. They are the NARCISICISTS attempting to dispose of humanity by turning the human race into controllable things ... This is heading towards the hideous parody of life: robotic transhumanism. C.S. Lewis's book title comes to mind: "The Abolition of Man," though he really treated the subject directly in "That Hideous Strength."
Man is NOT created without a soul. When "Science" becomes bent into self-empowered idolatry, it ceases to honor each human being, becoming mankind's total enemy. There is a Hell, the Nazi "Ultimate Solution" attempted to bring it about ... and the CIA spirited Mengele and his ilk out of Germany to continue the pursuit of dehumanizing mankind ... all in the pursuit of the total CONQUEST of life, not honoring people, just abolishing us through heartless research that has no basis in the human experience.
To me, all social problems start at home, when the child is being introduced to the world by parents who have no clue what to do next. Like, almost all of us.
Most parents somehow survive the fist years only to find relief in kindergartens, elementary schools and other “educational” facilities, all of which serve the main purpose: to relieve the parents from the presence of their equally clueless offspring. All in all, we can count for about 30 years of such pretend life.
Then we turn 40 or 50 and suddenly become aware that it’s the end of the road. No more fun, no more lack of responsibility, more and more challenges, from a staircase to impossible user interface “solutions”.
Our offspring were outsourced to the educational “system”, which has to manage them and efficiently. And it does so by inventing fantasy subjects and entire fields, like astronomy, social sciences, public relations or archeology. Our offspring are happy with their diplomas and overgeneralized empty talks that contribute nothing and lead nowhere, but create the aura of “I, the Einstein of your life.”
The next day, they return to their laboratories and begin with “What could I do today?” They simply forgot to go out into the world and see what is needed, what may be helpful or valuable. They want another day of me-for-myself entertainment survival, waiting for their own 50th birthday…
Spot on ... and we READ ON to tackle this dreadful sterile system. I highly urge reading the elegant 1952 book by Josef Pieper that opens up the long history leading to burnt out man: "Leisure the Basis of Culture." It delves into the world of total work that robs us of the ability to live in inner harmony and connect to God - indeed we cannot pray unless we are at leisure, thus leisure is the basis of worship. IT Is the prerequisite for cultivating the truly human conscience, heart, soul, and mind that becomes fixated on raw materialism, retooling reality (currently all power centers are collaborating on the total scientific remaking of the human brain and DNA, that we be turned into a new race of ignoble unhuman transhumans forever chained to earth and other planets throughout the universe ... but never able to enter heaven. Living is replaced by existence in a world of total work, absent of daydreams, ideals universal to the human condition, with no dreams of holiness and happiness, only productivity, unaware of our self and our Maker. Yes, it is demonic - get real, there is a devil, and he is bent on eradicating the human children of God who have a BODY.
This erudite book (my edition has an Introduction by T.S. Eliot) was once a staple of philosophy classes. It is well worth the read! Keep the Faith. Read the Gospels and all else in a worthy edition of Holy Scripture. Above all, when you feel the urge, step out of the farce system you aptly described, Dan, and you will meet Christ, who is coming to unplug us from the "Eye of Sauron" transmitters (smart phones) invented and issued to track, hack and control us all. The entire 20th century was awash in warnings - Tolkien, CS Lewis, Yates's "The Second Coming," it goes on. Look around, see the signs, and fear nothing, for the king of farce is being dethroned and our connection to God is being installed for eternity. This is the hideous underbelly of "Total Science."
Hi, Robert, thank you for the inspiration, I’ve got my copy and I’ll check that book (haven’t read before), sounds interesting. Your description here reminds me of the Hindu approach, who see everything as an expression of human worship of the Divine Principle, literally every activity being a form of praying (or connection).
“Smart” things are by definition smarter than us, so it is an obvious insult to our humanity and natural connection with the Source. Not using, not planning. No need. Life in the slow lane is so beautiful and gives us many opportunities to appreciate that short time that we are allocated to spend on the Earth.
The question is not whether, or to what extent, science applies to human studies. Rather, the appalling ignorance has led many to claim that they are doing science when they are clearly charlatans. Recent examples of ignorance include phrases such as "settled science", "scientific consensus", "climate skeptic", "vaccine skeptics" etc. Authorities got away with charlatanry, where declared consensus cannot be challenged.
I so enjoy reading your posts with the threads you weave together from history and philosophy to illuminate our current predicament. Many thanks for all the work you do putting this together.
Hm. You had a benign experience with the COVID nightmare. Rather than seeing incompetent boobs with degrees, I was viewing demonic characters leering through fierce eyes while blood dripped from their fanged, reptilian jaws. Insatiable creatures of mayhem getting high on human suffering, their hooves trampling tender necks. I still shiver when I look around and see that we have not vanquished these genocidal clowns.
Science in its pure form is aware of assumptions made and the limitations of science and as such is beautiful! Science molested by ego and ignorance is a travesty and dangerous.
(SNIP) "You can imagine what a bitter blow it is to me that all my long struggle to win peace has failed. No man who knows me would deny that the two things I love above all others are peace and dinosaurs. I was enthused as any man when I learned that dinosaurs had once again appeared - and conjured forth by industrious and trustworthy German sciencery. I am astonished that the promised recreational park featuring these noble beasts did not materialize, even though Mister Goebbels sent us convincing tickets of admission and discount coupons to the park gift shoppe. However, it appears now that this was a well planned deception. I now believe that Hitler has planned all along to use these dinosaurs for evil, and that there shall be no park in our time."
Some similar issues are discussed in the following free article on "The COVID-19 Pandemic & Its Continuing Impacts: Applying Common Sense, Along with Scientific Understanding". If you send me an email, I would be happy to send you a copy: pgordon@rcn.com .
You might also find my dissertation of interest: Public Administration in the Public Interest. You can access the entire dissertation on the first of the Public Administration pages at https://GordonHumankind.com . See especially Chapter 6 that addresses the problem of value-neutral scientism. That chapter was influenced in part by Arthur Koestler's The Ghost in the Machine. I also teach online courses for Auburn University Outreach. For information about those, see my website or email me at the above email address.
Sharing a couple of articles from the 1940's-1950's about how scientism is ill-suited to direct human affairs. Warnings from our past.
The first is from a Foreign Affairs magazine in January, 1941 as WWII was about to draw in the US. Foreign Affairs is a Council on Foreign Relations publication. Not exactly friends of individual liberty and freedom. But as the wheels of propaganda were ramping up to draw the US into WWII it was used to shape minds of the intelligentsia who read it and set up the 'US saving the world from totalitarianism' narrative that was needed to support and sustain a war effort. And so the article reveals truths they knew about totalitarianism - and still know - even though the same global corporatists had invested in the rise of totalitarianism in Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union. And where 'following the science' unmoored by virtuous ethics leads to:
"In considering the relation of science to the dictators we must bear in mind that the human mind is intrinsically no better than it was 10,000 years ago. It simply has acquired new interests under social tension...Today, however, it means more to our society to discover how the atom is constituted than that a new ecclesiastical architecture is developed, more that the mechanism of heredity is revealed than that savages in Africa are converted to Christianity. Perhaps its pragmatic attitude has led science to ignore essential ethical values. But the point is that science dominates our society, and that if our society wants science it must choose between totalitarianism and democracy. There can be no compromise."
...
"Mass production and labor-saving devices have created a social crisis. We cannot have mass production and mechanization without planning. Engineers and their financial backers are planners. Dictators are planners. Whether they know it or not, most corporation executives and engineers are necessary totalitarians in practice. Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin clearly have the instincts of engineers. Their states are designed social structures."
...
"The totalitarians say that a capitalistic democratic government cannot control the experts, the inventors, the creators of this evolving mechanical culture. They therefore have decided to take control of thinking, above all scientific thinking, out of which flow the manufacturing processes and the machines which change life."
FF - The second is a paper about using the pseudoscience of Behaviorism to govern, rule, apply as jurisprudence. The first half (14 pages) of this paper is dry, explores game theory concepts of using behaviorism when adjudicating law. The second half (14 pages) contains the interesting discussion with concepts excerpted below:
Law and Behavioral Science
Law and Contemporary Problems (Duke Law School), Winter, 1963
"Looking far into the future, it may be predicted that the methods of legally directed thought control may eventually take over the direction and control of what some now call human values and that this power may be turned to scientific purposes. If this is to be accomplished, it should be along the lines of Experimental Jurisprudence. When this is done, there will no longer be any basis for the belief that social science is impossible because it contains no elements of control such as those found in physical sciences. The means of social control by law are now developing and increasing all about us. Mankind may soon be required to make the choice whether these powers are to be exercised for greed, lust and caprice of individuals or are to be used in the scientific advancement of the race."
Beutel is not altogether clear as to what he means by the "scientific advancement of the race," and the laws appropriate to this advancement; but he does have a test, of sorts, of good laws.:
"The laws to be enacted or recommended should be those which lead to the greatest sum total of satisfaction of needs, demands and desires, in that order of rank. Thus a more complicated person is certain to have greater wants than a simple individual, and his combined interests as a whole will therefore weigh heavier in the scientific scale than those of a less complicated (less intelligent, if you will) individual."
But supposing the "less complicated" people object to this dispensation?:
"If ... sufficient public interest is to be developed in adopting new scientific methods, it will be necessary for this small [at most "six percent of the entire population"] nucleus from which come the able scientists to convince the great majority to agree to types of governmental and legal devices which the overwhelming mass of people cannot even understand. Under the circumstances, the development of popular pressure for adoption of scientific discoveries into the legal and governmental field sufficient to overcome the inertia of those in control of the machinery is difficult, if not impossible, to achieve."
That the scientists should be restrained by the need to get the consent of the ("less complicated") governed is reassuring, but perhaps only temporarily, since we know that this restraint does not derive from any principle to be found in the book. The Declaration of Independence states that governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed," but Beutel dismisses its "theories" as mere "fictions," even more "advanced in the realm of fiction" than the notion of the "divine right of kings."
FF - Met thinks these warnings from the past, from immediately before WWII as totalitarianism was ascendant and following WWII as the defeat of an Axis of totalitarianism allowed its proponents to begin to insinuate themselves back into respectability after nearly two decades had begun to erase the memory of what it had led to. And now here we are. The "those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it" thing applies.
"Generally speaking, I believe that “scientific experts”—with their God of Scientism—should never be given positions of executive authority when it comes to making decisions about complex public policy issues." Proven to be absolutely true.
I was impressed with a Doctor of Science, Norman W. Walker who wrote ten books on the subject of health and nutrition. I contacted him, after I said a prayer and his book came into my hands...and it led to my getting rid of a rapidly-growing tumor. We corresponded from 1976 to 1985, when he died. He advised me on setting up a holistic center...and told me to keep the price affordable of any books I would write. He was selling his books for well under $10 back in the 1980s. I did not have a book published, until 1995, but when it was finished...I kept the price low, because of Dr. Walker. He acquired a great amount of knowledge in his many years of research...and he used it to benefit others. This is the way it should be! We need to share and enlighten others, when we have information that would be of benefit.
What a lovely, inspiring story - thank you!
Totally agree with your philosophy. xxx
"The scientists should have one seat at the table, along with people who understand the limitations of empirical science in managing human affairs."
Please, someone etch this on the front doors at HHS, FDA, NIH, NIAID, CDC...
Just this morning listened to Alex Berenson’s interview with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (now head of the NIH), and he’s on the exact same page.
Perhaps Churchill said it best:”Experts on tap, not on top.” However, keeping experts in their proper place requires political leadership with intelligence and courage. Arguably, Governor de Santis showed this when he retained experts like Battacharia and Kuldorf and implemented their advice over the scientism consensus.
Great article John - Thank you!
You took a subject that could be somewhat nebulous and obtuse and framed it perfectly. Thank you.
No need to refer to gods, science, etc. We need one honest person who will approve the Universal Code of Scientific Publication. Rule #1 will be: if your abstract deviates from your methods or description or conclusions, you are fired from the scientific circles for good. Rule #2: if your article merely duplicates precious publications and brings nothing new to the subject matter, ditto. Rule #3: if you took a single cent from the published study, ditto. People in the science circles enjoy enough non-financial (along with financial) benefits, there is no reason to multiply their revenues. Rule #4: no scientific work should ever be patented. All current patents should be cancelled. Four simple rules, and within a month the science will become a truly pure area.
Good start - but I would INSIST on modifying Rule #1 to start as 1A, followed by !B: "If your CONCLUSIONS are unjustified by the methods or description ...."
Savvy research professionals no longer even READ the Conclusions, just 1A, then draw their own Conclusions. They're tired of the "urge to conflate."
My view is that we have enough science for 5 millennia to come. We don’t need any more science or scientists. We should now spend a lot of time trying to understand what we’ve already got and how to use it.
IC engines still at 20-30% after 150 years of research and developments? ALL researchers in these facilities should be fired immediately and permanently. New minds are needed, with new visions.
Researchers and scientists in medicine clearly run away from patients. They don’t need patients, only computers. Who knows, a real, living patient may contradict their genius work…
Folks playing with the so called “space” are only good at exploding huge volumes of contaminants, all paid from public money. Since the start of the “space exploration”, we haven’t gone anywhere farther than our TV sets.
No more science, please.
"Science for science's sake" indeed takes us off the cliff and into self-destructive madness that "Doctor" Josef Mengele monstrously inflicted on children and adults alike ... all in the name of playing God. "Research for research's sake" completely misses the point. Self-styled "smartest men in the lab" have nothing to do with the ancient and very holy practice of medicine. They are the NARCISICISTS attempting to dispose of humanity by turning the human race into controllable things ... This is heading towards the hideous parody of life: robotic transhumanism. C.S. Lewis's book title comes to mind: "The Abolition of Man," though he really treated the subject directly in "That Hideous Strength."
Man is NOT created without a soul. When "Science" becomes bent into self-empowered idolatry, it ceases to honor each human being, becoming mankind's total enemy. There is a Hell, the Nazi "Ultimate Solution" attempted to bring it about ... and the CIA spirited Mengele and his ilk out of Germany to continue the pursuit of dehumanizing mankind ... all in the pursuit of the total CONQUEST of life, not honoring people, just abolishing us through heartless research that has no basis in the human experience.
Gee now ..,. I wonder who would be behind that?
To me, all social problems start at home, when the child is being introduced to the world by parents who have no clue what to do next. Like, almost all of us.
Most parents somehow survive the fist years only to find relief in kindergartens, elementary schools and other “educational” facilities, all of which serve the main purpose: to relieve the parents from the presence of their equally clueless offspring. All in all, we can count for about 30 years of such pretend life.
Then we turn 40 or 50 and suddenly become aware that it’s the end of the road. No more fun, no more lack of responsibility, more and more challenges, from a staircase to impossible user interface “solutions”.
Our offspring were outsourced to the educational “system”, which has to manage them and efficiently. And it does so by inventing fantasy subjects and entire fields, like astronomy, social sciences, public relations or archeology. Our offspring are happy with their diplomas and overgeneralized empty talks that contribute nothing and lead nowhere, but create the aura of “I, the Einstein of your life.”
The next day, they return to their laboratories and begin with “What could I do today?” They simply forgot to go out into the world and see what is needed, what may be helpful or valuable. They want another day of me-for-myself entertainment survival, waiting for their own 50th birthday…
Spot on ... and we READ ON to tackle this dreadful sterile system. I highly urge reading the elegant 1952 book by Josef Pieper that opens up the long history leading to burnt out man: "Leisure the Basis of Culture." It delves into the world of total work that robs us of the ability to live in inner harmony and connect to God - indeed we cannot pray unless we are at leisure, thus leisure is the basis of worship. IT Is the prerequisite for cultivating the truly human conscience, heart, soul, and mind that becomes fixated on raw materialism, retooling reality (currently all power centers are collaborating on the total scientific remaking of the human brain and DNA, that we be turned into a new race of ignoble unhuman transhumans forever chained to earth and other planets throughout the universe ... but never able to enter heaven. Living is replaced by existence in a world of total work, absent of daydreams, ideals universal to the human condition, with no dreams of holiness and happiness, only productivity, unaware of our self and our Maker. Yes, it is demonic - get real, there is a devil, and he is bent on eradicating the human children of God who have a BODY.
This erudite book (my edition has an Introduction by T.S. Eliot) was once a staple of philosophy classes. It is well worth the read! Keep the Faith. Read the Gospels and all else in a worthy edition of Holy Scripture. Above all, when you feel the urge, step out of the farce system you aptly described, Dan, and you will meet Christ, who is coming to unplug us from the "Eye of Sauron" transmitters (smart phones) invented and issued to track, hack and control us all. The entire 20th century was awash in warnings - Tolkien, CS Lewis, Yates's "The Second Coming," it goes on. Look around, see the signs, and fear nothing, for the king of farce is being dethroned and our connection to God is being installed for eternity. This is the hideous underbelly of "Total Science."
Hi, Robert, thank you for the inspiration, I’ve got my copy and I’ll check that book (haven’t read before), sounds interesting. Your description here reminds me of the Hindu approach, who see everything as an expression of human worship of the Divine Principle, literally every activity being a form of praying (or connection).
“Smart” things are by definition smarter than us, so it is an obvious insult to our humanity and natural connection with the Source. Not using, not planning. No need. Life in the slow lane is so beautiful and gives us many opportunities to appreciate that short time that we are allocated to spend on the Earth.
Wishing you the best of this time, Dan.
The question is not whether, or to what extent, science applies to human studies. Rather, the appalling ignorance has led many to claim that they are doing science when they are clearly charlatans. Recent examples of ignorance include phrases such as "settled science", "scientific consensus", "climate skeptic", "vaccine skeptics" etc. Authorities got away with charlatanry, where declared consensus cannot be challenged.
Yes, there is a huge difference between scientific experts, and scientism "experts,"
I so enjoy reading your posts with the threads you weave together from history and philosophy to illuminate our current predicament. Many thanks for all the work you do putting this together.
Hm. You had a benign experience with the COVID nightmare. Rather than seeing incompetent boobs with degrees, I was viewing demonic characters leering through fierce eyes while blood dripped from their fanged, reptilian jaws. Insatiable creatures of mayhem getting high on human suffering, their hooves trampling tender necks. I still shiver when I look around and see that we have not vanquished these genocidal clowns.
Science in its pure form is aware of assumptions made and the limitations of science and as such is beautiful! Science molested by ego and ignorance is a travesty and dangerous.
Science molested by philanthrocapitalism is equally dangerous
Plandemonium "In the Crosshairs of Covid-19 Scientology Operation" - Reiner Fuellmich and an operation to silence a CoS-Critc https://nuremberg2.substack.com/p/plandemonium-in-the-crosshairs-of Debunking Einstein Part 7 by Chris Edwards ft God vs The Big Bang https://teslaleaks.com/f/debunking-einstein-part-7-by-chris-edwards-ft-god-vs-evolution
(SNIP) "You can imagine what a bitter blow it is to me that all my long struggle to win peace has failed. No man who knows me would deny that the two things I love above all others are peace and dinosaurs. I was enthused as any man when I learned that dinosaurs had once again appeared - and conjured forth by industrious and trustworthy German sciencery. I am astonished that the promised recreational park featuring these noble beasts did not materialize, even though Mister Goebbels sent us convincing tickets of admission and discount coupons to the park gift shoppe. However, it appears now that this was a well planned deception. I now believe that Hitler has planned all along to use these dinosaurs for evil, and that there shall be no park in our time."
~Prime Minister Chamberlain, September 3, 1939
Some similar issues are discussed in the following free article on "The COVID-19 Pandemic & Its Continuing Impacts: Applying Common Sense, Along with Scientific Understanding". If you send me an email, I would be happy to send you a copy: pgordon@rcn.com .
You might also find my dissertation of interest: Public Administration in the Public Interest. You can access the entire dissertation on the first of the Public Administration pages at https://GordonHumankind.com . See especially Chapter 6 that addresses the problem of value-neutral scientism. That chapter was influenced in part by Arthur Koestler's The Ghost in the Machine. I also teach online courses for Auburn University Outreach. For information about those, see my website or email me at the above email address.
Sharing a couple of articles from the 1940's-1950's about how scientism is ill-suited to direct human affairs. Warnings from our past.
The first is from a Foreign Affairs magazine in January, 1941 as WWII was about to draw in the US. Foreign Affairs is a Council on Foreign Relations publication. Not exactly friends of individual liberty and freedom. But as the wheels of propaganda were ramping up to draw the US into WWII it was used to shape minds of the intelligentsia who read it and set up the 'US saving the world from totalitarianism' narrative that was needed to support and sustain a war effort. And so the article reveals truths they knew about totalitarianism - and still know - even though the same global corporatists had invested in the rise of totalitarianism in Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union. And where 'following the science' unmoored by virtuous ethics leads to:
Science in the Totalitarian State
Foreign Affairs, January 1, 1941
https://web.archive.org/web/20181125112623/https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/1941-01-01/science-totalitarian-state
"In considering the relation of science to the dictators we must bear in mind that the human mind is intrinsically no better than it was 10,000 years ago. It simply has acquired new interests under social tension...Today, however, it means more to our society to discover how the atom is constituted than that a new ecclesiastical architecture is developed, more that the mechanism of heredity is revealed than that savages in Africa are converted to Christianity. Perhaps its pragmatic attitude has led science to ignore essential ethical values. But the point is that science dominates our society, and that if our society wants science it must choose between totalitarianism and democracy. There can be no compromise."
...
"Mass production and labor-saving devices have created a social crisis. We cannot have mass production and mechanization without planning. Engineers and their financial backers are planners. Dictators are planners. Whether they know it or not, most corporation executives and engineers are necessary totalitarians in practice. Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin clearly have the instincts of engineers. Their states are designed social structures."
...
"The totalitarians say that a capitalistic democratic government cannot control the experts, the inventors, the creators of this evolving mechanical culture. They therefore have decided to take control of thinking, above all scientific thinking, out of which flow the manufacturing processes and the machines which change life."
FF - The second is a paper about using the pseudoscience of Behaviorism to govern, rule, apply as jurisprudence. The first half (14 pages) of this paper is dry, explores game theory concepts of using behaviorism when adjudicating law. The second half (14 pages) contains the interesting discussion with concepts excerpted below:
Law and Behavioral Science
Law and Contemporary Problems (Duke Law School), Winter, 1963
https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2953&context=lcp
"Looking far into the future, it may be predicted that the methods of legally directed thought control may eventually take over the direction and control of what some now call human values and that this power may be turned to scientific purposes. If this is to be accomplished, it should be along the lines of Experimental Jurisprudence. When this is done, there will no longer be any basis for the belief that social science is impossible because it contains no elements of control such as those found in physical sciences. The means of social control by law are now developing and increasing all about us. Mankind may soon be required to make the choice whether these powers are to be exercised for greed, lust and caprice of individuals or are to be used in the scientific advancement of the race."
Beutel is not altogether clear as to what he means by the "scientific advancement of the race," and the laws appropriate to this advancement; but he does have a test, of sorts, of good laws.:
"The laws to be enacted or recommended should be those which lead to the greatest sum total of satisfaction of needs, demands and desires, in that order of rank. Thus a more complicated person is certain to have greater wants than a simple individual, and his combined interests as a whole will therefore weigh heavier in the scientific scale than those of a less complicated (less intelligent, if you will) individual."
But supposing the "less complicated" people object to this dispensation?:
"If ... sufficient public interest is to be developed in adopting new scientific methods, it will be necessary for this small [at most "six percent of the entire population"] nucleus from which come the able scientists to convince the great majority to agree to types of governmental and legal devices which the overwhelming mass of people cannot even understand. Under the circumstances, the development of popular pressure for adoption of scientific discoveries into the legal and governmental field sufficient to overcome the inertia of those in control of the machinery is difficult, if not impossible, to achieve."
That the scientists should be restrained by the need to get the consent of the ("less complicated") governed is reassuring, but perhaps only temporarily, since we know that this restraint does not derive from any principle to be found in the book. The Declaration of Independence states that governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed," but Beutel dismisses its "theories" as mere "fictions," even more "advanced in the realm of fiction" than the notion of the "divine right of kings."
FF - Met thinks these warnings from the past, from immediately before WWII as totalitarianism was ascendant and following WWII as the defeat of an Axis of totalitarianism allowed its proponents to begin to insinuate themselves back into respectability after nearly two decades had begun to erase the memory of what it had led to. And now here we are. The "those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it" thing applies.
"Generally speaking, I believe that “scientific experts”—with their God of Scientism—should never be given positions of executive authority when it comes to making decisions about complex public policy issues." Proven to be absolutely true.
Great piece!
Bravo 👏