THE PATH OF SCIENCE 229 



possible; we do not know what will happen to our economics 

 in the near future; nobody knows. 



It is not even possible to plan the whole conduct of a war, 

 at least if the war is to be won. There is little doubt that the 

 German and the Japanese staffs had complete plans for the 

 war that they have just lost. Those who defeated them, of 

 course, planned their operations, their supplies, and their 

 production. But these plans were based on fundamental prin- 

 ciples and were subject to instant change as the conditions of 

 the struggle changed. For this reason, prophesies as to the 

 course of the war had no validity; and an excellent lesson in 

 the weakness of human prevision can be obtained by reading 

 any book written between 1930 and 1945 that deals with the 

 probable course of the struggle between Germany or Japan 

 and their opponents. In politics and economics, the lesson is 

 the same: No one foresaw the Great Depression, the long- 

 continued New Deal administration in the United States, or 

 even such an isolated event as the fall from power of Winston 

 Churchill at the end of the European War.* 



The progressive adjustment of social organization to meet 

 the rapid changes produced by the development of science 

 and technology cannot be determined by the direct transfer 

 of the techniques used in the physical and natural sciences. 

 As von Hayek points out, there are great differences between 

 the methods of the physical sciences and those of the social 

 sciences.f The scientist confronted with the problems of 

 sociology tends to imagine a theoretical society that will 

 follow the principles of physical science and which he can 

 therefore understand. This is clearly marked in the social 

 philosophy of Comte and Saint-Simon and in the suggestions 

 of the "technocrats" and of J. D. Bernal and J. G. Crowther 

 with their idea of "frustration" (Chapter III, page 62). 



* H. B. Phillips, "On the Nature of Progress," American Scientist, 

 253 (1945). 



■f F. A. von Hayek, "Scientism and the Study of Society," Economica, 

 N.S., 10, 39 (1943). 



