Rationality, social myths and democracy

Author: (USA) Sydney Hook / Country:
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-07-01
Features: Why the pursuit of truth is not as strong and widespread in social inquiry as it is in natural science is an interesting question, but this question is irrelevant to what is discussed here. It is clearly related to the existence of conflict, and also related to the fact that in order to gain an advantage and seek to influence people, if all claims are to be subjected to criticism and public scrutiny, it would not be so easy to achieve this advantage. It must be noted in passing that in the previous few centuries, wherever it was believed that scientific discoveries threatened traditional privileges, there were definite obstacles to free inquiry in physics and biology. However, many people are indeed interested in discovering the truth about social and political matters, which is without a doubt. Indeed, very few people would dare to openly admit that they are not interested in truth when making an argument about the actual or potential state of affairs in any given situation. However, despite many people wishing to discover truth in this field, and despite the importance of understanding the truth about ourselves and the society we live in, we speak of social sciences merely out of courtesy. What is usually considered knowledge about social affairs is merely circulated within a certain group; in other groups, it is regarded as prejudice. Some people then draw hasty conclusions, saying that it is impossible to discover "many truths" in social sciences, or at most, only a "truth" or "law" to explain their relativity. The urgent need to improve social inquiry is to develop a common awareness of the various conditions that must be completed before making any statement intended to convey knowledge, assign meaning, and be tested. The argument of this chapter is that the greatest intellectual resistance to social inquiry, the most common cause of intellectual confusion, lies in the use of unanalyzed and unanalyzable abstract concepts in our discourse. Note that I am not simply saying the use of abstract concepts, i.e., the use of meaningful terms that do not directly point to what we can see, feel, touch, or hear. For example, we say a person is "naive," "reliable," "intellectual," etc., and say "spiritual courage is a very precious virtue," where all the important terms are abstract concepts that do not directly point to the tangible. Yet we understand their meaning. P13