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We Built Reality: How Social Science Infiltrated Culture, Politics, and Power
Over the last fifty years, pseudoscience has crept into nearly every facet of our lives. Popular sciences of everything from dating and economics, to voting and artificial intelligence, radically changed the world today. The abuse of popular scientific authority has catastrophic consequences, contributing to the 2008 financial crisis; the failure to predict the rise of Donald Trump; increased tensions between poor communities and the police; and the sidelining of nonscientific forms of knowledge and wisdom. In We Built Reality, Jason Blakely explains how recent social science theories have not simply described political realities but also helped create them. But he also offers readers a way out of the culture of hermeneutics, or the art of interpretation. Hermeneutics urges sensitivity to the historical and cultural contexts of human behavior. It gives ordinary people a way to appreciate the insights of the humanities in guiding decisions. As Blakely contends, we need insights from the humanities to see how social science theories never simply neutrally describe reality, they also help build it.
154 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 2, 2020
32 people are currently reading
378 people want to read
About the author
Jason Blakely
8 books22 followersJason Blakely is a political philosopher and Professor of Political Science at Pepperdine University in California. The author of widely-read books—such as We Built Reality and Lost in Ideology—his essays have also been featured in major public venues like The Atlantic and Harper's Magazine.
Writing on a broad range of topics in contemporary political theory—from ideology and scientific expertise to utopianism and religion—Blakely has been called “our finest critic of misplaced appeals to scientific authority in political life.” He has delivered talks across the United States and in Europe and his writings have been translated into Spanish, Chinese, and Polish.
Writing on a broad range of topics in contemporary political theory—from ideology and scientific expertise to utopianism and religion—Blakely has been called “our finest critic of misplaced appeals to scientific authority in political life.” He has delivered talks across the United States and in Europe and his writings have been translated into Spanish, Chinese, and Polish.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
September 25, 2021
3.5/5. The basic gist is that the dominance of the natural sciences (physics, chemistry, biology, etc...) has helped to inculcate a faith and trust in "scientism" to explain all things. But scientism has also extended into the social sciences uncritically - many people heedlessly assume that social science (particularly in its popularization such as in the writings of Malcolm Gladwell and the 2005 bestseller 'Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything') is neutral and objective whereas in reality, there is always some ideology smuggled in (among the examples Jason Blakely uses is the "broken windows" theory that posits that visible signs of criminal and disorderly behaviour fosters further criminality and disorder and which New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani used to justify tougher crackdowns on miscreants, many of whom were only guilty of minor misdemeanours not warranting their punishment under the tougher policies). I know that for myself, I have definitely wielded the insights of moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt's 'The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion' in considering how liberals and conservatives, believers and skeptics, come to their worldviews.
I'll admit, I don't fully comprehend all of Blakely's argument, but as a Christian I appreciate him drawing attention and scrutiny to social science's inherently ideological bent. I once heard an MIT professor speculate that there were more Christians in the natural sciences than in the social sciences and I think there is truth to that. Blakely advocates for a return and recovery of the humanities as a framework from which to address important areas of public discourse. I also thought this quote was quite good.
“Indeed, a culture of scientism helps produce a culture that also rejects genuine scientific authority. The scientism studied in these pages, by falsely trading on an authority it does not wield, helps to sow a wider skepticism and cynicism about the 'elite' voices of scientists as such. A disturbing increase in science denial (e.g. conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers) is in a mutually supporting dialectic with the absolute scientism of a Pinker or a Dawkins. Although they have not yet realized it, figures like Pinker and Dawkins, far from defending science, undermine it by overpromising and exaggerating its authority. Ultra-Darwinists and biblical literalists are dance partners”
I'll admit, I don't fully comprehend all of Blakely's argument, but as a Christian I appreciate him drawing attention and scrutiny to social science's inherently ideological bent. I once heard an MIT professor speculate that there were more Christians in the natural sciences than in the social sciences and I think there is truth to that. Blakely advocates for a return and recovery of the humanities as a framework from which to address important areas of public discourse. I also thought this quote was quite good.
“Indeed, a culture of scientism helps produce a culture that also rejects genuine scientific authority. The scientism studied in these pages, by falsely trading on an authority it does not wield, helps to sow a wider skepticism and cynicism about the 'elite' voices of scientists as such. A disturbing increase in science denial (e.g. conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers) is in a mutually supporting dialectic with the absolute scientism of a Pinker or a Dawkins. Although they have not yet realized it, figures like Pinker and Dawkins, far from defending science, undermine it by overpromising and exaggerating its authority. Ultra-Darwinists and biblical literalists are dance partners”
August 13, 2020
Whilst the rise of the natural sciences is one of the stupendous achievements of the modern world, and whilst the development of modern technological innovation, has issued in manifold benefits, the scientific "mentality" - let's call it "scientism"- has left a less satisfactory legacy. Scientism suggests that all of human life, organisation and behaviour can be explained using the methodology of the natural sciences. But there is no single view for all things. Humans are not "things" and are fundamentally different to things.
The thesis: social science is not science. We have fooled ourselves. The field of human exploration is the humanities, not the natural sciences and its methodology. The rest of the book explores how this works in different realms:
Part 1 explores the way we see the market in terms of scientism, as if "the economy" were an entity to be examined, rather than a set of human relations and actions. This is why economic prediction is so precarious. It's not physics.
Part 2. Machines. By which Blakely means thinking of our minds/brains as machines or in mechanical terms (see Steven Pinker). The extension of Pinker's approach, when applied to depression and the like, becomes the medicalization of human ailments like depression and the management of our feelings. From there we are not far from the suggestion of generating the "right personalities". From here we move to the realm of human relations as "techniques" to gain access or right relationships.
Finally, Part 3 addresses the use of Law and Order. Critiquing "The Bell Curve" Blakely suggests that disparities in criminal classification between social groups and races are aligned to a selective approach to measuring behaviour and crime rates. For example, middle and upper class drug use is quietly ignored, and hence do not appear statistically.
Whatever we may make of the specific examples or the author's handling of them, the underlying thesis, I think, stands: the social sciences are not sciences and great harm has ensued by treating them as such.
Blakely closes by asking, "Where are the new humanists?" which might indeed be the right questions (p. 134).
The thesis: social science is not science. We have fooled ourselves. The field of human exploration is the humanities, not the natural sciences and its methodology. The rest of the book explores how this works in different realms:
Part 1 explores the way we see the market in terms of scientism, as if "the economy" were an entity to be examined, rather than a set of human relations and actions. This is why economic prediction is so precarious. It's not physics.
Part 2. Machines. By which Blakely means thinking of our minds/brains as machines or in mechanical terms (see Steven Pinker). The extension of Pinker's approach, when applied to depression and the like, becomes the medicalization of human ailments like depression and the management of our feelings. From there we are not far from the suggestion of generating the "right personalities". From here we move to the realm of human relations as "techniques" to gain access or right relationships.
Finally, Part 3 addresses the use of Law and Order. Critiquing "The Bell Curve" Blakely suggests that disparities in criminal classification between social groups and races are aligned to a selective approach to measuring behaviour and crime rates. For example, middle and upper class drug use is quietly ignored, and hence do not appear statistically.
Whatever we may make of the specific examples or the author's handling of them, the underlying thesis, I think, stands: the social sciences are not sciences and great harm has ensued by treating them as such.
Blakely closes by asking, "Where are the new humanists?" which might indeed be the right questions (p. 134).
December 4, 2022
Despite the subtitle, I was disappointed to find that this book doesn't tell you "how" social science infiltrated our world. I was hoping for some historic/anthropological explanation of why social science experts have come to garner so much adulation.
Despite this shortcoming, the book kept me entertained. The author convinced me of the dubious and problematic effects social science can have in popular culture and society, particularly when it takes on a life of its own. Though, the persuasiveness of his vignettes/examples were his or miss.
Despite this shortcoming, the book kept me entertained. The author convinced me of the dubious and problematic effects social science can have in popular culture and society, particularly when it takes on a life of its own. Though, the persuasiveness of his vignettes/examples were his or miss.
November 26, 2022
Besides the typos, this was a nice exposé of an alternative to scientism: the idea, in other words, that we should look for satisfaction and place trust in other fields besides science. Some of the details may have been a bit shaky and possibly overstated along the way, but I gotta say I'm mostly on Jason's side.
March 4, 2021
I don’t think I’m smart enough to fully grasp the totality of Blakely’s argument but this was a thrilling read pregnant with insights.
December 7, 2024
Poetry can restore the social sciences.
This is the basic argument of Jason Blakely in his thoughtful book, “We Built Reality.” The social sciences (economics, sociology, psychology, anthropology, history, etc.) according to Blakely have adapted the same approach of the natural sciences to itself, and the results throughout history have had devastating results.
To further explain: After proper experimentation, if chemistry has perfectly predictable results, why can’t economics? Why can’t we develop perfectly predictable theories about humanity and their behavior en masse?
His overall insight is dependent on the “Double-H”, or the Double-Hermeneutic idea. I’m no expert, but my understanding of this is when the interpretation about something goes beyond description and explanation of that something, but creates an entirely new way in which that something is interpreted. Whole new interpretive methods are applied to the study of that something, and before you know it, that interpretation has changed the reality of that something. To use Blakely’s definition, the double-hermeneutic effect is when “an interpretation of the world shapes the very interpretations that comprise it” (pg. XXVI).
In evil form, this is how the concept of race was developed, which led to the justification of slavery in our recent western world (https://library.harvard.edu/confronti...). This sort of thinking led also to eugenics (think Margret Sanger, Nazis, etc.). And on and on.
It has also led to our technocratic society where humans are treated like computers. It’s a conviction that we can manipulate humans like we can machines and create predicable results.
This is the result of a domination of scientism, or the conviction that science is enough for us humans to understand all truth about our world - including humanity. It’s been happening in some form since the scientific revolution began in the 1500s.
In the middle chapters, Blakely provides more broad examples. He shows how all the “experts” failed to predict the housing collapse of 2008 even though the science was on their side (“the economy is great! There’s no housing bubble! Look at the data!). He shows how all the “experts” used scientific data to show without a shadow of a doubt Clinton would win the 2016 election - and was wrong.
Blakely also address the pharmaceutical industry’s conviction of humans as a “biochemical machine in need of pharmacological intervention” (pg. 55) when something like depression is discovered. “No longer was depression or anxiety a mood that attuned an individual to the reality of loss or injustice within society. Rather than having existential, spiritual or political meaning, the significance of depression was reduced to a mechanics by the metaphor of Homo machina” (pg. 54).
Perhaps Blakely overstates his case to prove his point. Nevertheless, his general insight that humans cannot be adequately predicted and understood using mere data-driven scientific method a has been proven time and time again.
For some of my own observations:
Broadly speaking, his insight of the effect of a “Double Hermeneutic” can stretch to our interpretation of past historyt. If we are so convinced that our current understanding of something is true, and those in the past and their understanding of that something was wrong (and thus primitive), then the past becomes very uninteresting, and non-beneficial to read.
Also, here is an example from my expertise (pastoral ministry, Christianity, etc.). I am a protestant, and I see this constantly in protestant church history books. Protestants tend to tell church history like this:
New Testament - Saint Augustine - Martin Luther & the Reformation
What about the centuries before Saint Augustine? What about the more than 1,000 years between Saint Augustine and Martin Luther?
It’s not quite dismissed, per say. But when protestants are convinced that our current approach to the interpretation of Scripture is correct (this standard usually begins with Martin Luther, much of which can also found in Saint Augustine, but not all…) and every other approach that doesn’t closely align is not just wrong but potentially dangerous - we’re left with the almost dismissal of 1300 years of church history.
This shapes the reality for new protestant students of church history. Origen, or Athanasius of Alexandra, Gregory of Nyssa, Thomas Aquinas… why read them?
This is an example of that Double Hermeneutic theory (I’m probably overstating my case but you get the point).
I would also argue that his insight applies to so many other areas in our lives. Here is another example fro my world - pastoral ministry (and I assume would also apply to leadership in general).
I’m amazed at how most leadership books for pastors are driven by data and method, and the ease by which we often think “if we applied this method or this strategy here or there, the outcome would be _____” in a church congregation.
What about the people involved? The church’s unique story? The unique stories of those that make up the congregation, and all the variables those humans bring to the dynamic of that church? Can a broadly applied data-driven method really apply to every church? Think of how many experts are created by this thinking, think of how much power these experts can gain power and wealth from their expertise. Think of the motivations we can then have for creating new theories that sound so right because they are driven by thorough research.
Again, these things cannot be dismissed. But they cannot be the final end of the story.
In conclusion, what is Blakely’s answer to this probl?
The humanities.
“The humanities insist that there is an art to interpreting human behavior that is never reducible to a strict or exact science. Although it is not scientific, this art is not subjective or arbitrary, either. Rather, it is an art practiced by many historians, literary scholars, cultural theorists, and even some rogue social scientists. Only the art of interpretation can begin to restore our culture to a clearer form of self-understanding that escapes the current delusions and disappointments of our reigning scientism” (pg. 135-136).
In other words, perhaps we need to read more of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, or William Blake, or (of course) the Bible to understand the people around us rather than only science driven data about the what and why of their behavior. We need more Flannery O’Connor to grasp our human behavior, more Emily Dickenson, Maya Angelou, Hemingway, W.E.B DuBois… and so forth. I’ve personally learned so much about humanity through reading David McCoullough’s biographies of Truman and the Wright Brothers than what Wikipedia can offer me.
Blakely ends with the question, “Where are the new humanists?”
Yes… where are they?
This is the basic argument of Jason Blakely in his thoughtful book, “We Built Reality.” The social sciences (economics, sociology, psychology, anthropology, history, etc.) according to Blakely have adapted the same approach of the natural sciences to itself, and the results throughout history have had devastating results.
To further explain: After proper experimentation, if chemistry has perfectly predictable results, why can’t economics? Why can’t we develop perfectly predictable theories about humanity and their behavior en masse?
His overall insight is dependent on the “Double-H”, or the Double-Hermeneutic idea. I’m no expert, but my understanding of this is when the interpretation about something goes beyond description and explanation of that something, but creates an entirely new way in which that something is interpreted. Whole new interpretive methods are applied to the study of that something, and before you know it, that interpretation has changed the reality of that something. To use Blakely’s definition, the double-hermeneutic effect is when “an interpretation of the world shapes the very interpretations that comprise it” (pg. XXVI).
In evil form, this is how the concept of race was developed, which led to the justification of slavery in our recent western world (https://library.harvard.edu/confronti...). This sort of thinking led also to eugenics (think Margret Sanger, Nazis, etc.). And on and on.
It has also led to our technocratic society where humans are treated like computers. It’s a conviction that we can manipulate humans like we can machines and create predicable results.
This is the result of a domination of scientism, or the conviction that science is enough for us humans to understand all truth about our world - including humanity. It’s been happening in some form since the scientific revolution began in the 1500s.
In the middle chapters, Blakely provides more broad examples. He shows how all the “experts” failed to predict the housing collapse of 2008 even though the science was on their side (“the economy is great! There’s no housing bubble! Look at the data!). He shows how all the “experts” used scientific data to show without a shadow of a doubt Clinton would win the 2016 election - and was wrong.
Blakely also address the pharmaceutical industry’s conviction of humans as a “biochemical machine in need of pharmacological intervention” (pg. 55) when something like depression is discovered. “No longer was depression or anxiety a mood that attuned an individual to the reality of loss or injustice within society. Rather than having existential, spiritual or political meaning, the significance of depression was reduced to a mechanics by the metaphor of Homo machina” (pg. 54).
Perhaps Blakely overstates his case to prove his point. Nevertheless, his general insight that humans cannot be adequately predicted and understood using mere data-driven scientific method a has been proven time and time again.
For some of my own observations:
Broadly speaking, his insight of the effect of a “Double Hermeneutic” can stretch to our interpretation of past historyt. If we are so convinced that our current understanding of something is true, and those in the past and their understanding of that something was wrong (and thus primitive), then the past becomes very uninteresting, and non-beneficial to read.
Also, here is an example from my expertise (pastoral ministry, Christianity, etc.). I am a protestant, and I see this constantly in protestant church history books. Protestants tend to tell church history like this:
New Testament - Saint Augustine - Martin Luther & the Reformation
What about the centuries before Saint Augustine? What about the more than 1,000 years between Saint Augustine and Martin Luther?
It’s not quite dismissed, per say. But when protestants are convinced that our current approach to the interpretation of Scripture is correct (this standard usually begins with Martin Luther, much of which can also found in Saint Augustine, but not all…) and every other approach that doesn’t closely align is not just wrong but potentially dangerous - we’re left with the almost dismissal of 1300 years of church history.
This shapes the reality for new protestant students of church history. Origen, or Athanasius of Alexandra, Gregory of Nyssa, Thomas Aquinas… why read them?
This is an example of that Double Hermeneutic theory (I’m probably overstating my case but you get the point).
I would also argue that his insight applies to so many other areas in our lives. Here is another example fro my world - pastoral ministry (and I assume would also apply to leadership in general).
I’m amazed at how most leadership books for pastors are driven by data and method, and the ease by which we often think “if we applied this method or this strategy here or there, the outcome would be _____” in a church congregation.
What about the people involved? The church’s unique story? The unique stories of those that make up the congregation, and all the variables those humans bring to the dynamic of that church? Can a broadly applied data-driven method really apply to every church? Think of how many experts are created by this thinking, think of how much power these experts can gain power and wealth from their expertise. Think of the motivations we can then have for creating new theories that sound so right because they are driven by thorough research.
Again, these things cannot be dismissed. But they cannot be the final end of the story.
In conclusion, what is Blakely’s answer to this probl?
The humanities.
“The humanities insist that there is an art to interpreting human behavior that is never reducible to a strict or exact science. Although it is not scientific, this art is not subjective or arbitrary, either. Rather, it is an art practiced by many historians, literary scholars, cultural theorists, and even some rogue social scientists. Only the art of interpretation can begin to restore our culture to a clearer form of self-understanding that escapes the current delusions and disappointments of our reigning scientism” (pg. 135-136).
In other words, perhaps we need to read more of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, or William Blake, or (of course) the Bible to understand the people around us rather than only science driven data about the what and why of their behavior. We need more Flannery O’Connor to grasp our human behavior, more Emily Dickenson, Maya Angelou, Hemingway, W.E.B DuBois… and so forth. I’ve personally learned so much about humanity through reading David McCoullough’s biographies of Truman and the Wright Brothers than what Wikipedia can offer me.
Blakely ends with the question, “Where are the new humanists?”
Yes… where are they?
June 8, 2021
Incredibly intriguing and, I think, quite right. Blakely’s main contention is that the popularization of social sciences actually creates new realities rather than simply studying them. Or, in his own words, “interpretations of social reality penetrate and radically change that social reality” (55). The social sciences, at least as practiced and disseminated at the popular level, are far better at creating meaning than they are interpreting it.
Fair enough. I can see that. Here is my trouble though: how can I know Blakely isn’t committing the same “sin”? Is this book truly only revealing how popular level social sciences create reality, or is that a reality being created by the book? How can I be sure Blakely isn’t creating a reality rather than simply interpreting a reality?
I don’t raise these questions to prove Blakely has failed. I’m sure he has excellent reasons why the above is not the case. But he doesn’t address that danger. For what he is doing is an analysis of the social phenomenon of popularized social science–aka he is going social science of social science. How can the reader be sure what he interprets truly is only an interpretation of reality rather than a creation? An answer to this question would have made this a much stronger book.
All that to say, I do agree with his thesis and his interpretations of where the social sciences has outrun the hand of its masters and its devolved into a kind of monster destroying much in its wake in the name of objective reality (133-134). Blakely suggestion is that we treat the creations of social science more humanistically (134). And I wholeheartedly agree.
But again, have I simply just been caught up in the created reality of a social scientist or have I seen the light?
Fair enough. I can see that. Here is my trouble though: how can I know Blakely isn’t committing the same “sin”? Is this book truly only revealing how popular level social sciences create reality, or is that a reality being created by the book? How can I be sure Blakely isn’t creating a reality rather than simply interpreting a reality?
I don’t raise these questions to prove Blakely has failed. I’m sure he has excellent reasons why the above is not the case. But he doesn’t address that danger. For what he is doing is an analysis of the social phenomenon of popularized social science–aka he is going social science of social science. How can the reader be sure what he interprets truly is only an interpretation of reality rather than a creation? An answer to this question would have made this a much stronger book.
All that to say, I do agree with his thesis and his interpretations of where the social sciences has outrun the hand of its masters and its devolved into a kind of monster destroying much in its wake in the name of objective reality (133-134). Blakely suggestion is that we treat the creations of social science more humanistically (134). And I wholeheartedly agree.
But again, have I simply just been caught up in the created reality of a social scientist or have I seen the light?
November 20, 2022
i feel
like if we were able to build reality
why isn’t it better
like if we were able to build reality
why isn’t it better
January 7, 2023
Finished last year, but apparently never updated the status.
An interesting book for a bunch of reasons (e.g. questioning the very idea of 'social science', pointing out the somewhat -I hope?- more obvious idea that social science findings can strongly influence the things they purport to describe, right up to essentially creating the phenomena, etc.)
Somewhat marred by the author's heavy bias to focus on "right" social science (e.g. right-aligned economics) and an almost total ignoring of... well, just *so* much the rest of social science that is 90% "left". Certainly, there have been strong, and in periods dominant, right-leaning schools of thought (the entire "Chicago School" of economics) but, I mean, *nothing* in the entire rest of economics, sociology, psychology, education, etc...? Maybe he just didn't want to get canceled, but the argument itself would have benefitted from applying it to a broader set of cases.
Still, 4-stars. A strong book.
An interesting book for a bunch of reasons (e.g. questioning the very idea of 'social science', pointing out the somewhat -I hope?- more obvious idea that social science findings can strongly influence the things they purport to describe, right up to essentially creating the phenomena, etc.)
Somewhat marred by the author's heavy bias to focus on "right" social science (e.g. right-aligned economics) and an almost total ignoring of... well, just *so* much the rest of social science that is 90% "left". Certainly, there have been strong, and in periods dominant, right-leaning schools of thought (the entire "Chicago School" of economics) but, I mean, *nothing* in the entire rest of economics, sociology, psychology, education, etc...? Maybe he just didn't want to get canceled, but the argument itself would have benefitted from applying it to a broader set of cases.
Still, 4-stars. A strong book.
December 15, 2020
Blakely’s book is exhortive, calling the reader towards a hermeneutics of interpretation. More generally, he believes that this is the best way to follow the old Platonist impulse: to see things as they are. Human beings are rational and scientific, but not completely - Blakely’s interpretive framework helps recover the human beings buried beneath the scientism of social science. A short but evocative work that lays the groundwork for a fruitful path of research in the humanities.
March 6, 2025
This guy is brilliant. He's thinking like three levels above me. I don't have the words to comment on his argument, it's too good. Also written so well - crisp, succinct, and direct.
Mind blown here. Amazing. Top book so far this year.
Mind blown here. Amazing. Top book so far this year.
July 28, 2020
Interesting read. Pretty quick but covers economics, policing, global politics, and a bunch of other topics from the perspective of a critique of abusing scientific authority.
April 23, 2021
A deep and compassionate discussion of social science and it's political implications.
January 27, 2023
Loved this book!
September 6, 2023
Read it!
November 12, 2024
Ein Buch, dass relativ kurz ausführt, wie die Sozialwissenschaften unsere Realität verändern und schaffen.
April 10, 2025
Wonderfully thought-provoking work. Blakely’s concept of the “double hermeneutic” is one that will stay with me.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews