trivas7
26th August 2008, 17:34
In the West, and now much of the first world, we remain dominated, knowing it or not, by a worldview called reductionism. This view was most simply stated by French mathematician Simon LaPlace in the early 18th Century. He imagined a vast intelligence. Given the positions, velocities and masses of all the particles in the universe, this demon could, using Newtons laws, calculate the entire future and, because Newtons laws are time reversible, the entire past of the universe. This is a stunning view.
Was Marx himself a social reductionist who believed that human beings can achieve godlike control over society, as if from an Archimedean standpoint, virtually transcending unintended social consequences such that every action brings about a known effect? F. Hayek saw this as a synoptic delusion, an illusory belief that one can live in a world in which every action produces consistent and predictable outcomes. As a literary man, I'd call it the "Tolstoyan fallacy" so well laid out in War and Peace. And, invariably perhaps, the quest for total knowledge becomes a quest for totalitarian control.
Was Marx himself a social reductionist who believed that human beings can achieve godlike control over society, as if from an Archimedean standpoint, virtually transcending unintended social consequences such that every action brings about a known effect? F. Hayek saw this as a synoptic delusion, an illusory belief that one can live in a world in which every action produces consistent and predictable outcomes. As a literary man, I'd call it the "Tolstoyan fallacy" so well laid out in War and Peace. And, invariably perhaps, the quest for total knowledge becomes a quest for totalitarian control.