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The Lost Science of Man
Book by Becker, Ernest
- GenresNonfiction
177 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1971
77 people want to read
About the author
Ernest Becker
18 books912 followersErnest Becker was an American cultural anthropologist and author of the 1974 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Denial of Death.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 24, 2021
According to The Lost Science of Man, the central problem of mature social sciences is man is no longer the focus of these disciplines. For the same reason, the larger problem is there is no unified field of social sciences.
Becker’s analysis is every social science (economics, psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science) began with the aim of describing a complete image of man as the focus and centre of each discipline. The ideal human exchange/mind/group/living situation/power arrangement was to be ascertained and then put into practice for the betterment of society. Together these ideals would be held as the moral standard. People and society would be arranged according to this best, most moral standard. Such were the utopian beginnings of each social science.
Shit happened. There were obstacles, fights, external and internal power plays, and the eggheads gave up more political power in order to study tinier fields, each paradoxically exploding with more data about less and less. Each discipline in its turn got whittled down by successive generations of academics, trying to empirically prove each tiny piece of their discipline until the unified and moral vision of each was lost. Also social scientists and everyone else was so obsessed with empiricism and having social sciences mimic the hard sciences, all unifying visions were pushed out until each discipline was a huge pile of data and a group of methods for collecting data with no clear order.
Imagine each discipline was a cake and the pieces were sliced thinner and thinner until no one was sure the papery wedge on their plate had ever resembled cake. There were hundreds of papery cake slices, but you would need to eat dozens to feel like you even experienced cake.
Becker argues that modern social scientists have almost no political power. Therefore, they only collect data and describe dwindling pieces of human life, cannot actively put their findings into practice, and can no longer fit all these small pieces and little concepts together.
Becker traces this thinning of the cake through sociology and anthropology by name dropping and summarizing the work behind each name. He hammers on his narrow thesis for 157 pages. It is a fascinating and dispiriting tour of both disciplines.
Table of Contents:
1. The Tragic Paradox of Albion Small and American Social Science
2. Sketch for A Critical History of Anthropology
Becker’s analysis is every social science (economics, psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science) began with the aim of describing a complete image of man as the focus and centre of each discipline. The ideal human exchange/mind/group/living situation/power arrangement was to be ascertained and then put into practice for the betterment of society. Together these ideals would be held as the moral standard. People and society would be arranged according to this best, most moral standard. Such were the utopian beginnings of each social science.
Shit happened. There were obstacles, fights, external and internal power plays, and the eggheads gave up more political power in order to study tinier fields, each paradoxically exploding with more data about less and less. Each discipline in its turn got whittled down by successive generations of academics, trying to empirically prove each tiny piece of their discipline until the unified and moral vision of each was lost. Also social scientists and everyone else was so obsessed with empiricism and having social sciences mimic the hard sciences, all unifying visions were pushed out until each discipline was a huge pile of data and a group of methods for collecting data with no clear order.
Imagine each discipline was a cake and the pieces were sliced thinner and thinner until no one was sure the papery wedge on their plate had ever resembled cake. There were hundreds of papery cake slices, but you would need to eat dozens to feel like you even experienced cake.
Becker argues that modern social scientists have almost no political power. Therefore, they only collect data and describe dwindling pieces of human life, cannot actively put their findings into practice, and can no longer fit all these small pieces and little concepts together.
Becker traces this thinning of the cake through sociology and anthropology by name dropping and summarizing the work behind each name. He hammers on his narrow thesis for 157 pages. It is a fascinating and dispiriting tour of both disciplines.
Table of Contents:
1. The Tragic Paradox of Albion Small and American Social Science
2. Sketch for A Critical History of Anthropology
Displaying 1 of 1 review