320
PARTISAN REVIEW
is studying the psychology of rats and applies the findings to teenagers, one
is likely to go wrong.
We can take the findings of some of the sciences and apply some to
other subjects, but it's a very delicate process, and throughout the last four
hundred years of western civilization it has been driven more by hope than
evidence. But, as we know, that hope has not been fulfilled.
What the current crop of classical liberal thinkers have come to see is
that to make amends for the oversights of scientism it is necessary to
become properly scientific.
This would first require understanding science as a process of discov–
ery, not the laying down of prerequisites, which is the province of
metaphysics and ontology, both of which are usually minimalist in their
scope precisely for this reason: the prerequisites of existence (or being) are
very few.
It would, furthermore, amount to the recognition that the human
species has certain unique attributes, ones that cannot be derived from our
understanding of other features of reality. We would learn that just because
there are some characteristics we share with the rat, the computer or the
north star, it doesn't follow that we are just like those entities, that we share
their basic nature or essence. A proper scientific approach reveals that with
the emergence of the human species some unique attributes have become
manifest.
The foremost of these is that human beings can think and that this
activity cannot be automatic. This seems like something we should know
from plain common sense, something that should be obvious to any parent
or teacher. Those who have dealt with children or students know that one
cannot force them to think. That particular contribution to the rearing or
educational process has to be provided by the child or student.
They
have
to will it to happen.
If they don't, it isn't going to happen. One can wear
funny hats, sing songs, do all sorts of tricks but they are not going to pay
attention until they choose to-it is up to them to do it.
More technical reflection also affirms this unique aspect of human
beings. They produce ideas, theories, novelty throughout the parameters of
their lives and none of that can be adequately explained by reference to
mere external stimuli or genetic constitution. Human beings initiate some
of what they do. Much of what is crucial to their lives is not simply the
result of previous forces working on them.
The late psychophysicist Roger W Sperry, who received the Nobel
Prize in the 1950s for his split-brain experiments, argued in his book
Science
and Moral Priority
that human beings have the kind of brain in which a high–
er portion moni tors and controls much of human behavior, even when
some portions of the lower brain might incline one in a set direction.
