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Weber on Science
Sep. 6th, 2003 02:22 pmI just found out that our neighbours' son is gay. Really? I always thought he was married. So who's the chick with the kid that keeps hagging out at their place?
This just goes to prove that I really am oblivious to the things going on around me. Nope, Regi is too busy floating out among the clouds.
I should be doing an English essay on Children's poetry. But wargh!!!! I don't want tooooo!!!!!!!! ;_;
Hate essays.
But I like the quote that "children have not yet learned to substitute alienation and commodities for human relationships." And that there is a "scarcity of value in the midst of the melancholy and uncertainty of a culture where all is for sale."
Which reminds me...
Last weekend, when I was doing my Anth250 essay on the theories of Weber I came across some very interesting quotes in a reading by Sayer talking about Weber's ideas:
Science has no meaning that transcends 'the purely practical and technical'. The 'former illusions' that it might be the 'way to true being' (the Greeks), the 'way to true art' and thereby the 'way to true nature' (the Renaissance), the 'way to true God' (Protestantism) or - a modern fallacy, nowadays believe in only by 'a few big children in university chairs' - the 'way to true happiness', have been dispelled...
Science is a means of establishing the facts of the case, no more and no less...
Science (Weber quotes Tolstoy) 'is meaningless because it gives no answer to our question, the only question important for us: "What shall we do and how shall we live?"'...
Science, in short, has nothing to say on questions of value, or in other words, so far as Weber is concerned, is silent on exactly that which gives all human life and action meaning.
I like those ideas. They make sense to me.
Science is the new religion. It's taken the place of the church in its hold over our lives. We rely on science to tell us how the world works. It answers our questions for us.
But he's right. It can't tell us how to live, or what we should do with our lives.
Science can tell us how we get sick, how we help those around us get better, how to look after ourselves, but it can't explain why those we love die.
In our culture there is no answer to that question.
This just goes to prove that I really am oblivious to the things going on around me. Nope, Regi is too busy floating out among the clouds.
I should be doing an English essay on Children's poetry. But wargh!!!! I don't want tooooo!!!!!!!! ;_;
Hate essays.
But I like the quote that "children have not yet learned to substitute alienation and commodities for human relationships." And that there is a "scarcity of value in the midst of the melancholy and uncertainty of a culture where all is for sale."
Which reminds me...
Last weekend, when I was doing my Anth250 essay on the theories of Weber I came across some very interesting quotes in a reading by Sayer talking about Weber's ideas:
Science has no meaning that transcends 'the purely practical and technical'. The 'former illusions' that it might be the 'way to true being' (the Greeks), the 'way to true art' and thereby the 'way to true nature' (the Renaissance), the 'way to true God' (Protestantism) or - a modern fallacy, nowadays believe in only by 'a few big children in university chairs' - the 'way to true happiness', have been dispelled...
Science is a means of establishing the facts of the case, no more and no less...
Science (Weber quotes Tolstoy) 'is meaningless because it gives no answer to our question, the only question important for us: "What shall we do and how shall we live?"'...
Science, in short, has nothing to say on questions of value, or in other words, so far as Weber is concerned, is silent on exactly that which gives all human life and action meaning.
I like those ideas. They make sense to me.
Science is the new religion. It's taken the place of the church in its hold over our lives. We rely on science to tell us how the world works. It answers our questions for us.
But he's right. It can't tell us how to live, or what we should do with our lives.
Science can tell us how we get sick, how we help those around us get better, how to look after ourselves, but it can't explain why those we love die.
In our culture there is no answer to that question.
