Asta

“An attitude of moral indifference has no connection with scientific "objectivity".”
― Max Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences

“The fate of an epoch which has eaten of the tree of knowledge is that it must know that we cannot learn the realm of the world from the results of Its analysis, be it ever so perfect, it must rather be m a position to create this meaning itself. It must recognize that general Views of lIfe and the unIverse can never be the products of increasing empirIcal knowledge, and that the highest Ideals, which move us most forcefully, are always formed only m the struggle with other Ideals which are just as sacred to others as ours are to us.”
― Max Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences

“This obstacle which should be relentlessly combatted as a sign of narrow-minded party fanaticism and backward political culture, is reinforced for a journal like ours through the fact that in social sciences the stimulus to the posing of scientific problems is in actuality always given by practical "questions" Hence the very recognition of the existence of a scientific problem coincides personally, with the possession of specially oriented motives and values A Joumal which has come into existence under the Influence of a general interest in a concrete problem, will always include among its contributors persons who are personally Interested In these problems because certain concrete situations seem to be incompatible with, or seem to threaten. the realization of certain ideal values In which they belIeve. A bond of similar ideals will hold this circle of contrIbutors together and it will be the basis of a further recruitment. This in turn will tend to give the Journal, at least in its treatment of questions of practical social policy, a certain "character" which of course inevitably accompanies every collaboration of vigorously sensitive persons whose evaluative standpoint regarding the problems cannot be entirely expressed even In purely theoretical analysis; in the criticIsm of practIcal recommendations and measures it quite legitimately finds expression under the particular conditions above discussed.”
― Max Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences

“[...]those more likely to be at the disposal of particular individuals and those which we should with greater confidence expect to find in the possession of an authority made up of suitably chosen experts. If it is today so widely assumed that the latter will be in a better position, this is because one kind of knowledge, namely, scientific knowledge, occupies now so prominent a place in public imagination that we tend to forget that it is not the only kind that is relevant. It may be admitted that, as far as scientific knowledge is concerned, a body of suitably chosen experts may be in the best position to command all the best knowledge available—though this is of course merely shifting the difficulty to the problem of selecting the experts. What I wish to point out is that, even assuming that this problem can be readily solved, it is only a small part of the wider problem.”
― Friedrich A. Hayek, The Use of Knowledge in Society