Notes
- Solomon H. Katz, “Toward a New Science of Humanity” this issue; Eugene G. d'Aquili and Charles Laughlin, Jr., “The Biopsychological Determinants of Religious Ritual Behavior” this issue.
- The relationships between monergism and the natural scientific quest for monistic understandings have been traced by several sources. Let me mention a few that are most significant for the point: Ernest Tuveson, Millennium and Utopia (New York: Harper & Row, 1964); Robert Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1957), esp. pt. 4 (“The Sociology of Science”); and David Bakan, The Duality ?f Human Existence (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966), chap. 1 (“Protestantism, Science and Agency“).
- The implication of these three options for social ethics arid a potential resolution of these basic models are discussed in my Ethics and the Urban Ethos (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972), chap. 6 (see also Wayne Proudfoot, “Conceptions of God and the self” [Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1971]).
- The areas wherein we experience choice seem to be culturally conditioned. Hannah Arendt points out in The Human Condition (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1958) that ancient Greece considered the public arena, the polis, to be the zone of freedom whereas the private life was governed by the “fates.” This is in contrast, she says, to modern life where the public domain seems to be governed by inexorable, uncontrollable forces and the private spheres, such as sexual behavior and life‐style, are granted maximum freedom. Scholars of comparative religion have long noted that Hinduism, for example, is a religion of orthopraxis while one can believe a number of things about the gods or the world. This can be contrasted with certain forms of Christianity where orthodoxy in belief is the mark of true membership arid a wide range of practice is allowed. Still other social historians and anthropologists argue that the sense of freedom is itself a product of a social history. In some societies failure to he obedient to pregiven orthopraxis and orthodoxy is punished by ostracism or death. But even here, presumably, the decision not to break the pregiven Structure has 10 be made, and that very presumption points to the reality of freedom.
- Richard Neuhaus's book, In Defense of People (New York: Macmillan Go., 1973), sorts out some of the key ideological and valuational biases that are current in the ecological arguments (see also R. W. Behan, “The Ecology Liturgy” Worldview [February 1974], pp. 34–46).
- Here I make specific reference to one of the most influential contemporary statements of this mood: The concluding paragraphs of Robert Heilbroner's An Inquiry into the Human Prospect (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1974) invoke Atlas as the normative image of humanity if survival is to be our destiny. No longer, he argues, can we focus on Prometheus. My point is that such appeals to supranatural models and metaphors are inevitable in exhortation and invitation to decision and that there are, at least, two modes of discourse that must be reckoned with–the descriptive and the normative. The latter cannot be read out of the former. Something is inevitably added to it, as the classic Catholic theologians working with natural philosophical models recognized when they spoke of the necessity of donum superadditum even if their in terpretation of the nature and source of this is unsatisfactory. Even more interesting is the question of why he felt compelled to invoke mythic symbols at all. Does he de facto admit the necessity of modes of discourse outside the boundaries of the assumptions of most of the book?
- The problem shows up, if I may be so bold as to point it out, even in the “Proposal to Establish an Independent Center for Advanced Study in Religion and Science” (Zygon 7 [1972]: 168–87). A close reading of this intriguing statement reveals an inter weaving of the descriptive and the normative, with occasional confusion as to which mode of discourse is being invoked. This is not surprising. Max Weber argues that every significant social movement is formed by an “elective affinity” between empirical‐material conditions and fundamental value commitments that are analytically distinct. Rut the recognition of this distinction is absolutely crucial if there is to be any genuine dialogical possibility between religion and science. Otherwise, “conversations” become a series of simultaneous lectures in separate halls.
- This is the wisdom of the traditional theological formulation fides quaerens intelletum, whatever difficulties specific articulations of the principle have.
- The distinction between fact and interpretation is another way of speaking of the kind of point I have been trying to make. It seems to me that, whatever the other faults of their thought, the problems posed by the “historicists”–Dilthey, Windleband, Rickert, and I would include Weber, Collingwood, and Troeltsch–remain with us. One distinction that was often drawn by this school of thought was that between the wissenschaften and the Geisteswissenschaften. Generally, the argument is that there are particular ingredients in human existence that can be grasped scientifically but not by the same kind of science that describes the natural order. Thus at least two modes of scientific discourse must be employed to deal with empirical reality. This group of scholars erred, in my judgment, fur they thought that the natural sciences moved from direct observation of facts to the articulation of the general laws about those facts. Thus they held with most nineteenth‐century philosophy of science that in certain areas of knowledge, the natural sciences, the interpretation was implied in the facts. If Kuhn and others are accurate in their reading of the history of science, however, the interpretation of natural facts derived less from the facts themselves and more from the shifting models and metaphors that people brought to the facts. Thus the position of the historicists on natural science may well have to be modified. But the question still remains whether their understanding of the distinction between these two areas of human understanding does not remain valid, for that was the area where they concentrated their most creative attention. Now it is quite possible that the debate between this posture and that of contemporary natural philosophers and scientists who want to use a singular vocabulary to deal with the whole of experience rests on what is meant by the word “nature.” Among the historicists, the word refers to those aspects of reality that are governed by regular laws, while the ideographic or Geisteswissenschaften deals with the specific and often idiosyncratic events, value‐laden decisions, and meanings of human history. The naturalists often use the word “nature” to apply to the whole of reality. My difficulty with the latter position is that a word that comes to mean every thing begins to mean nothing in particular, and there would be no reason to choose the word “nature” over “OM.” Both are equally uninformative except as a confessional utterance that one perceives the whole to be whole. Another serious problem of the historicists, namely, the tendency of their historical and social thought to move toward a radical relativism in values, is beyond the scope of this paper. But on the strengths and weaknesses of this school of thought generally, see the superb study by Georg Iggers, The German Conception of History (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1968). From the perspective of modern religious ethics, Reinhold Niebuhr makes the point as follows: “Man's freedom is unique because it enables him, though in the temporal process, also to transcend it by conceptual knowledge, memory, and self‐determining will. Thus he creates a new level of coherence and meaning, which conforms neither to the world of natural change nor yet to the realm of pure Being in which Greek idealism (and some theology) sought refuge from the world of change” (Faith and History [New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1949], p. 15). In terms more immediately familiar to Zygon readers, some quite analogous arguments are made by Theodosius Dobzhansky in his “Ethics and Values in Biological and Cultural Evolution” (Zygon 8 [1973]: 261–81).
- One could also make this case on cross‐cultural grounds. Ancient India, for example, had a number of the sciences highly developed–especially linguistics, grammar, mathematics (they invented or discovered, depending on your point of view, the zero and negative numbers)‐but these were unrelated to the technical achievement of Indian craftsmen so far as is known. Similarly with ancient Greece. The separation of science and technology, their distinction, and their relation are known to Zygon readers especially through K. B. Lindsay's “The Scientific and Technological Revolutions and Their Implications for Society” (Zygon 7 [1972]: 212–43).
- Alfred North Whitehead, The Function of Reason (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958), 11. 8. Whitehead proceeds to offer sharp criticism of those scientists and philosophers who dogmatically refuse to acknowledge the plain facts that there is a supra‐adaptive “reason” involved in the concrete “interactions”“purposes” and “meanings” of human life. this “reason” transcends what Ulysses shares with the foxes and is much closer to what Plato shares with the gods. The latter cannot be reduced to the former, arid it is the latter which is decisive for the development of civilization.
- By “ethos” is meant that network of values, stories, metaphors, and meanings which operate to legitimate social institutions and undergird the way of life of a social system. It is this into which individuals are enculturated; it is in relation to these that any specific science or technology is developed; it is against this that moral and intellectual protest develops by selecting new values, stories, metaphors, and meanings and by negating old ones. The importance of the term “ethos” suggests that a proper designation for this kind of study would be “ethology.” But that term has unfortunately been adopted by a group of scholars who attempt to analyze human communities on strictly animal‐behavior terms.
- Nor am I here arguing for the existence of any supernatural beings. Whether or not god(s) or value(s) exist independently from the fact that some people think they do is irrelevant to our concerns at this point. It is sufficient to suggest that, once believed to exist, the ideal informs action and has an empirical effect of ordering or reordering the ways in which humanity acts toward the biophysical order.
- The first published outline of this way of looking at the matter is found in my “Ethics: Social and Christian” Andover Newton Quarterly (January 1973), pp. 173–91. The purpose of that essay was to outline the relationships between the ethical, the social axiological, and the theological or Christian dimensions of normative refection. The fact that the third term is “Christian” may seem an undue confession of bias to some. I would make the point that critical theology is a peculiar product of the Judeo‐Christian tradition. It does not occur in any other religion so far as is known, except as they have been influenced by the Judeo‐Christian tradition. There are, of course, myths, rituals, symbols, wisdom, cosmologies, and philosophies in many if not all the world's religions, but none of the world religions except this one tradition has developed the comparable systematic tools for self‐critical examination of religious claims and justifications. I have argued elsewhere (Ethics and the Urban Ethos) that this is one area that sets this tradition off from the rest of human religious sensibility and provides a distinctive legacy to all religions. I stress this point, for if there is to be any genuine discussion between those concerned with critical and systematic examination of the realm of the “natural” and those with the “supranatural” the discussion might best take place at the same levels of abstraction; and the self‐critical abstract conceptuality of modern natural sciences is matched only by the theological tools hammered out in Western religious thought. Only the Indian religious philosophies are comparable epistemologically.
- I must stress that the tools for axiological analysis suggested below are still in the process of being developed. There is no broad consensus in the discipline I represent that this is the best way to proceed. I think it can be shown that the following tools elucidate what a good number of persons in my discipline actually do as they perform their craft; but, as Paul Deats (Toward the Discipline of Social Ethics [Boston: Boston University Press, 1972]) and Glen Stassen, editor of What Is Social Ethics? (forthcoming), exemplify, the academic boundaries and many of the major terms of the discipline are in dispute. Thus the perspective presented here must be seen as one effort to bring some clarity to the social dimensions of our work. Other religious social ethicists rely more directly on specific sociological theories–most notably on Marx, Parsons, or the phenomenologists. By focusing on the sectors of society wherein specific senses of value or worth are linked with structures believed to wield social power, a social axiological approach is differentiated from a more strictly sociological perspective and brings the normative dimensions of a social system into our field of scrutiny because of its intrinsic relationship to ethics.
- What is deemed as “worthy power” is what is seen as the essential character of God or the gods, and it is this fact that links social axiology and theology.
- The literature on this is far too vast to cite here. A number of recent studies confirm Weber's orientation, however, in spite of improvements on those data that are presently available as compared with what were at his disposal. Of special interest is Melford Spiro's Buddhism and Society (New York: Harper & Row, 1970) and a number of items mentioned in my “The Hindu Ethic and the Ethos of Development” (Religion and Society. [December 1973], pp. 5–33). Or, if one goes to a library and looks at the chapter headings of the basic books in sociology, anthropology, or comparative culture, one finds them frequently organized around these nine axiology sectors, although there is seldom a systematic statement of why these areas were selected. It is a further hypothesis of my research and reflections, not yet fully confirmed in my own thinking, that a society to exist as a society, and not just as a “bunch” must at least have some minimal role differentiation to sustain and promote at least five of these axiological sectors of society: language, at least storytelling and/or dancing to express the com monality of the society; Familial roles to care for the next generation; religious or voluntary bonding; some form of “political” leadership, at least when confronted with outside threats; and a technology that is a general cultural set of crafts for coping with the natural environment. I would designate these as “axial functions.” Specific educational, health‐care, legal, and economic institutions or roles, i.e., the professions, may not he required except as they are dealt with by the community as a whole, perhaps most often through religious means. Because research and reflection are as yet incomplete on this hypothesis, it is impossible to comment at length as to whether there is an evolution from the axial institutions to a fuller axiological system except to note that there are strong historical suggestions that while there is development–namely, constant change in the relations of these sectors and their mutual influence–it is not clear that there is a natural teleology in the general pattern of social or ethical development. A contrasting view is set forth by Talcott Parsons's Societies: Evolutionary and Comparative Perspectives (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice‐Hall, Inc., 1966). One might cite recent and intentional dedifferentiation of these functions under socialism, where economic, political, legal, expressive, educational, health‐care, and technological functions come under the direct control of the voluntary association‐in this case, the party. (N.B. I am drawing upon social‐ethical definitions of the terms “voluntary association” and “profession” that have been developed by James L. Adams.)
- When Solomon H. Katz introduced Buckminster Fuller to this IRAS conference, he called him a living example of a “technological saint.” That terribly interesting phrase poses many of the questions in nucce. Is it possible or desirable to lift up personal models of holiness in and for certain civilizational possibilities developing in our midst?
- Victor Ferkiss's Technological Man (New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1969), Jacques Ellul's The Technological Society (trans. John Wilkinson [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964]), Emanuel Mesthene's Technological Change (New York: Mentor Press, 1970), and William Leiss's The Domination of Nature (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972) rep resent major views and discuss the major options.
- Although there are numerous intramural debates on this point, there is relatively wide consensus (see A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism and Liberty [New York: Oxford University Press, 19541; J. H. Nichols, Democracy and the Churches [Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 19511; M. Walzer, The Revolution of the Saints [New York: Atheneum Publishers, 1968]; and David Little, Religion, Order and Law [New York: Harper & Row, 1969]).
- Cf. esp. Robert Merton, “Puritanism, Pietism and Science” in Social Theory and Social Structure, pp. 574–606; and R. Hooykaas, Religion and the Rise of Science (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1972).
- There have been intense debates on this since Max Weber wrote The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958), first published as essays in vols. 20 and 21 of the Archive für Socialwissenscaft und Socialpolitik, 1904–5.
- This eventually was most clearly articulated by Marx's notions of economic de terminism and alienation, notions for which, in his context and in view of recent history, can be understood. What the Marxist position cannot account for are the supranatural choices and sense of “ought” in the protestant ethic and spirit of capitalism that were contributing factors in the actual history that they attempt to explain. Further, Marxists made a fascinating supranatural choice and attempted to develop the “scientific” evidence to support it: They apotheosized the logic of economic development itself so that the very economic forces that produce the ills of humanity would also work out the “providential” destiny of human salvation by overcoming the contradictions. R. Tucker's Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961) is one of the better statements of the religious and ethical dimensions of this move. Modern communist states have pushed the logic of this further, for there the state becomes a total “theocratic” corporation, filled with ritual, myth, and symbol.
- Frederick Carney, the noted ethicist, has pointed out in a recent essay (“Public and Professional Accountability” in Stassen [n. 15 above]) that the preoccupation with technology in economics is producing problems also. The methods of technology have been so successful in bringing about recent material prosperity that they are being imported into the realms of policy and morality. The cost‐benefit analysis dominates. It is a mode of thought which is highly proper to technology and pertinent to the selecting of the proper means to desired ends; but it does not tell us the propriety of the desired ends. Economics as the “presiding queen of the social sciences” presumes that in all cases what people desire is desirable and can be measured in the profit ledger. Yet enormous amounts are spent trying to manipulate the images of the desirable.
- It is fascinating, from an axiological perspective, to note how various theorists respond to such a general malaise. The educators suggest that we need more scientific education. People in the expressive sector suggest we need better communication or a rebirth of the arts. Those who specialize in law suggest that we need a new constitution or should reclaim the spirit of the law in contrast to modern permissiveness. Family experts trace our difficulties to the failure of the family and propose new family models or techniques for shoring up families in trouble; medical people speak of deep pathology in the modern psyche or suggest chemotherapies to control aggressiveness, etc. In each case, the source of the disease with modern technology and the cure are located in a sector of the axiological map. Each betrays, however, the fact that the outside rings of axiological sectors are not finally decisive when they call for a new voluntary bonding among people around a different set of consciously chosen values (see next section [“Normative Sciences”] of this paper).
- Gideon Sjoberg, The Pre‐industrial City (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1960), p. 27.
- Gideon Sjoberg, The Pre‐industrial City (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1960), p. 31.
- Gideon Sjoberg, The Pre‐industrial City (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1960), p. 271.
- I draw these terms from G. von Rad, s The Message of the Prophets (New York: SCM Press, 1968), although they can be found in a number of contemporary authors. Von Rad argues that a major breakthrough of human understanding occurred when the biblical authors portrayed the Lord as staging an assault on humanity's ontocratic complacency and forced encounter with social‐ethical reality. Whitehead makes a similar point in dealing with the speculative reason in ancient Greece in accenting what Plato shares with the gods.
- See Gunnar Myrdal, Asian Drama (New York: Pantheon Books, 1968) and The Challenge of World Poverty (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972).
- See the Introduction, in Mao Tse‐tung, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse‐Tung, 1st ed. (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1966).
- Theodore Roszak, Where the Wasteland Ends: Politics and Transcendence in Post‐industrial Society (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1972).
- See n. 6 above.
- David Miller, The New Polytheism (New York: Harper & Row, 1974).
- See JamesL. AdamsThe Geography and Organization of Social ResponsibilityUnion Seminary Quarterly Review (Spring and Summer 1974), 245–60.
- Stassen.
- R. W. Behan, personal communication, July 1974