Carrot Juice Or Chemo

BLASPHEMY IN PRAISE OF THE POLITICAL AND SCIENTIFIC The (On the work of Max Weber)

Ricardo González Villaescusa

Review appeared in Science and Technology Notes No. 21 , December 2006, pp. 50-51.

"Also the early Christians knew very exactly what the world is ruled by demons and who was involved in politics, ie who agrees to use as a means of power and violence, has sealed a deal with the devil, so that is not true that good activity occurs only good and evil evil, but often the opposite happens. Who does not see this is a child, politically speaking. "

Max Weber, the politician and scientist, 1918.

It very difficult to summarize a book published in the early twentieth century, constantly cited and on which there are numerous papers and citations in scholarly journals and internet, however, as a consequence of having quoted this author His work in the forum of members of AACTE, the head of this section requested to inform the work and the author. We do not claim to be more than a few notes I encourage readers of our magazine to read a book that maintains a very fresh despite the years he has edited.

is not really a book conceived as such but two conferences of the author, whose recipients were college students, which must be understood in that context some of the obvious provocations that are released throughout the work, as well as clear and direct style. Moreover, the English edition under review is prefaced by Raymond Aron , making the book into a great work of reflections of two authors who separated the two great wars (both were mature men erupted first and second World Wars) and his strong belief that links anti-Marxist.

Max Weber is the social scientist who proposed the alternative stronger scientific Marxist paradigm of social sciences and liberal sociologists and historians drink in their sources, which are numerous as it is an author of a very extensive and varied work. It was a clear anti-positivist, which deeply marked the distinction between social and natural sciences, which only begins to fade today, considering that "the truths in economics, sociology and political science are always partial and reflect only part of the social complexity .

Regarding the work in question, Weber expressed a "contradiction" lived in first person, being a scientist, the son of a senior politician and Otto von Bismarck's Germany, and being himself a man of action who came to participate in the creation of a reformist political party (Partido German Democratic) that aimed to unite the social democrats and liberals. The radicalization of Europe in the first half of the twentieth century led to the failure of a project that, ironically, could be the basis of politics practiced in our days on the mainland for almost every game of electoral spectrum.

At the first conference and the largest part of the book, Politics as a vocation, the author defines the policy and the qualities that should be those dedicated to it. Since the definition of the state as a "human community within a given territory (...) calls (successfully) for the monopoly of legitimate physical violence", understands that to gain control of the state produces the unavoidable use power and violence as inevitable means for achieving other ends, whether selfish or altruistic, as reflected in Weber's own header to this article.

Politics is a constant struggle to achieve the impossible, with passion, sense of responsibility and moderation, tenacity and perseverance. Qualities that are summed into a politician with such a vocation, humility. A politician must overcome vanity, every hour of every day, the enemy of "giving to a cause and all restraint." And this is where we find the first major difference with the scientist. In academic circles vanity is an "occupational disease" but completely harmless to not distort the work of scientists. The specialization of science in those years had "entered a phase of specialization previously unknown and which is going to stay forever," allows the "experience of science" that feeling that you have the anonymous scientist Weber puts in his mouth the phrase, "it took thousands of years before I came along and thousands waited in silence for me to test this hypothesis." Without this experience of science, it is not possible vocation as a scientist to Max Weber, which is absolutely incompatible with that humility which calls for the politician.

In the second part, the author devotes a good place to applied science, the meaning of science, criticizing the address at that time had acquired between young scientists of the early twentieth century. Despite all the achievements, progress, knowledge and problems new man "will never be able to capture more than a minimal portion of what the life of the spirit shines continuously." Questioned, and then, if the medicine can raise questions (reference values) about whether life is worth living or when they cease to be (a statement of values), when the lifeline of the terminally ill to end by saying that In short, "all natural sciences respond to the question of what we do if we want to master life technically."

Therefore, it is impossible to be both a man of action and man of science without going into deep contradictions between the two vocations. This contradiction manifests itself more so when totalitarianism is worth of science, especially the humanities and social sciences, to submit for the purposes of scientific research for political action. Thus, physicists from the former USSR they could do "communicate" with dialectical materialism but could not dictárseles their formulas and equations. Thus "Max Weber never tired of showing that, in politics, no concrete steps could take the dignity of a scientific truth. It is impossible to favor one group without hurting another, demonstrate that progress in global production is not paid too expensive to ruin small traders or impoverishment of a disadvantaged region. One can only say with certainty that a particular measure is in the common interest when increasing the satisfaction of some without decreasing anyone "( From the review of Prometheus Editorial ).

To R. Aron, in his introduction of the edition consulted the contradiction between the two vocations is at the point that "there is not a single example of opposition [political] that the government used against unfair or deceitful arguments consisting criticized for not having achieved success nobody could have achieved or made no concessions have been avoided. For Professor social science that wants to enter politics this is a permanent tension (...), the vocation of science is unconditionally true. The political profession does not always say it. " And the best example to understand it focuses on the basic principle of the welfare state. The greatest satisfaction that occurs among the poor by allocating the resources of the richest whose degree of dissatisfaction is lower than that achieved by the first result of this charge in the form of tax, reducing the income of the first to benefit of seconds, not a scientific truth, only political action that has produced quite a few "rewards" between large masses of population throughout the twentieth century, especially after the two world wars in the West, have achieved middle class status. I thought it worth asking whether, in fact, this show is not the result of a social scientist, Raymond Aron, who is clearly positioned liberal approach, defending the political and economic liberalism.

Therefore, the debate in Forum members AACTE which alluded to the political quality and / or scientific new head of the Secretariat of State for Universities and Research is so old it was well worth remembering in terms that occurred in Germany in early last century.