{"id":2413228,"date":"2025-05-01T02:15:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-01T06:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/monetizemail.com\/magatoon\/?p=2413228"},"modified":"2025-05-01T06:53:21","modified_gmt":"2025-05-01T10:53:21","slug":"science-and-liberty-social-physics-from-comte-to-samuelson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/monetizemail.com\/magatoon\/2025\/05\/01\/science-and-liberty-social-physics-from-comte-to-samuelson\/","title":{"rendered":"Science and Liberty: Social Physics from Comte to Samuelson"},"content":{"rendered":"

In his 1933 lecture at the London School of Economics titled The Trend of Economic Thinking<\/em>, Frederich Hayek identified a shift in economic thought toward planning and interventionism. He argued that the German Historical School and the institutionalists were major contributors to this trend. However, what actually laid the foundation for planning and interventionism in the following years was the formalism of neoclassical theory itself. Hayek and his mentor Ludwig von Mises in the 1910s and 1920s were part of the neoclassical tradition, and the idea that \u201cformalism\u201d itself initiated this shift in economic thinking is what Boettke calls, \u201cWhere Hayek went wrong.\u201d Hayek was being left behind by his profession. Once among the most referenced economists in England, by the postwar era, some economists questioned whether his work even qualified as economics. The best example of this was when he submitted his Nobel lecture to Economica<\/em>, and they asked him to revise it. What caused this departure from the market to the plan? The major intellectual forces of the time: scientism and statism, which always seem to co-exist.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The followers of scientism \u2014 those who hold a dogmatic belief in the validity and certainty of their theories \u2014 tend to believe that the only obstacle to solving social ills is a problem of execution. Since they believe they already have all the answers, the temptation toward statism becomes irresistible.<\/p>\n

The Man of Good Will<\/h2>\n

Paul Samuelson, in his famous 1948 textbook Economics<\/em><\/a> \u2014 one of the best-selling books in the history of the discipline \u2014 criticized Hayek, writing: \u201cNo immutable \u2018wave of the future\u2019 washes us down \u2018the road to serfdom,\u2019 or to utopia. Where the complex economic conditions of life necessitate social coordination and planning, there can sensible men of good will be expected to invoke the authority and creative activity of government.\u201d In his view, one day well-intentioned men who act solely in the public interest will enter politics, and economists should guide them in solving social ills like unemployment, inflation, recession, and poverty.<\/p>\n

This dream is what Robert Nelson calls the \u201csecular religion of scientific management\u201d in his 2001 book Economics as Religion<\/em><\/a>. The secular religion of scientific management is the idea that we can solve the problems of society in the same way we solve problems in science. This mindset assumes that the means and ends of a society are given, and in such a world, the only issue is a problem of \u201callocation,\u201d not \u201ccoordination.\u201d And what better tool to solve the allocation problem than applied mathematics \u2014 A field in which the means and ends are assumed to be known? Why tolerate the chaos of capitalism, with all its business cycles and monopolies, when we could achieve a world of \u201cperfection\u201d? At the same time, the so-called \u201cnews\u201d from the Soviet Union seemed appealing \u2014 so much so that Samuelson wrote, \u201cRussia with its communistic government appears to be on the march.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Scientific Management of Society<\/h2>\n

In this historical context, it seemed regressive for post-World War II America not to embrace the idea of scientific management of society.I. If the entire world was moving in that direction, and the numbers from the Soviet Union appeared to demonstrate success in postwar reconstruction, then the only question was: when should the United States begin the process of saying goodbye to the invisible hand of the market and welcome the man of good will, who will help us solve our societal problems? The dream was to manipulate the market mechanism to achieve desired social outcomes, as envisioned by the \u201cplanner,\u201d presumed to act in society\u2019s best interest.<\/p>\n

When reading the texts of the Progressive Era, one finds a passion for discovery in the writings of its thinkers. A belief that they were uncovering something entirely new. A confidence that makes one exclaim: \u201cWhy has no one thought of this before!\u201d These thinkers shunned the past and embraced science as the path forward. And while the reformers of the New Liberalism in the late 19th century shared a similar enthusiasm \u2014 though perhaps to a lesser extent \u2014 the Progressive Era was especially marked by its confidence in the power of scientific solutions..<\/p>\n

Social Physics and Its Unintended Consequences<\/h2>\n

What\u2019s interesting about Comte is that his starting point was similar to Hayek\u2019s: the idea that society possesses a spontaneous order, not directed by a rational plan but emerging from countless individual plans. This is evident in his works like Social Statics, or <\/em>Theory of Spontaneous Order of Human Society<\/em><\/a>. But where Comte diverged from this vision is in his theory of positive philosophy. For Comte, spontaneous order was not the root of progress, nor should it be the foundation for a rational society. Instead, society should be guided by science and scientists. The relationship between man and nature \u2014 and between men \u2014 should be directed by science.<\/p>\n

As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy<\/em> describes Comte\u2019s view: \u201cThe moral question, \u2018What should I do?\u2019 is no longer asked in the first person, and is transformed into an engineering problem: \u2018What should be done to make men more ethical?\u2019\u201d The question that social scientists must answer thus becomes an engineering problem. In this literature, as emphasized by Comte, the dogma of liberty is seen as an obstacle to reorganization.<\/p>\n

Comte\u2019s vision of reorganization is tied to his theory of the three stages of history. The first is the Theological Stage, in which society and politics are primarily influenced by religion. The second is the Metaphysical and Abstract Stage, which one might argue is closest to Adam Smith\u2019s grand plan of liberty. The third is the Scientific or Positive Stage, in which society is no longer directed by religion or liberty, but by science. This is the trajectory of history in Comte\u2019s view, and any resistance to it is reactionary \u2014 an impediment to the development of civilization.As Comte famously put it, \u201cThe goal of every science is foresight.\u201d He regarded the Positive Stage as \u201cthe highest accomplishment of the human mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

This idea, described by Frank Knight as \u201csalvation by science,\u201d is a recurring theme in the history of social thought. As shown in this article, the belief in scientific management of society stretches from Comte to Samuelson. It assumes that scientists have either found or will soon find the solutions to our social ills. The only remaining obstacles are those \u201creactionary\u201d classical liberals who resist the execution of these plans and seek to limit state power. Even if the theorists of a positive science of human society try to remain apolitical, their assumptions inevitably lead to statism. They assume that we already possess all the knowledge and solutions to our problems, and yet those problems persist \u2014 therefore, the market must be inadequate, and we need the visible hand of the state.<\/p>\n

The unintended consequence of this thinking is captured well by Hayek: \u201cOnce one understands this, it also becomes clear why methodological and political differences so frequently go together: those who believe that it is in the power of science to predict particular individual events, or the position of individuals, naturally also want to use that power to produce the particular results they desire.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, What Is the Role of Economists?<\/h2>\n

In light of this, one may reasonably ask: What is the role of the social scientist? And more specifically, what is the role of the economist? This question has been answered in different ways by various thinkers, including Samuelson, as discussed earlier. One compelling answer comes from James Buchanan in his book What Should Economists Do?<\/em> The role of economists is not social engineering but aiding in the process of social understanding. Economists have this role because of the subject matter they study: the inevitable ignorance of mankind and the fundamentally different nature of solutions to social problems \u2014 solutions that involve trade-offs, not final answers.<\/p>\n

And when society faces trade-offs, it is better for individuals to be autonomous contractors \u2014 free to choose and free to preserve their liberty \u2014 rather than servants of a state, whether that state is theological or scientific.<\/p>\n

The post Science and Liberty: Social Physics from Comte to Samuelson<\/a> was first published by the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER)<\/a>, and is republished here with permission. Please support their efforts.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In his 1933 lecture at the London School of Economics titled The Trend of Economic Thinking, Frederich Hayek identified a shift in economic thought toward planning and interventionism. He argued that the German Historical School and the institutionalists were major contributors to this trend. However, what actually laid the foundation for planning and interventionism in …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":507,"featured_media":2324418,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2413228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/monetizemail.com\/magatoon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2413228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/monetizemail.com\/magatoon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/monetizemail.com\/magatoon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monetizemail.com\/magatoon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/507"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monetizemail.com\/magatoon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2413228"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/monetizemail.com\/magatoon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2413228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2413229,"href":"https:\/\/monetizemail.com\/magatoon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2413228\/revisions\/2413229"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monetizemail.com\/magatoon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2324418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/monetizemail.com\/magatoon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2413228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monetizemail.com\/magatoon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2413228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monetizemail.com\/magatoon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2413228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}