Schumacher on Science and Wisdom

Against knowledge in the service of power

E.F. Schumacher is known for his book Small is Beautiful. Early in his career as an economist he was influenced by, and professionally benefitted from, the preeminent economist of the twentieth century, John Keynes. In the latter half of his life, however, he became disillusioned with the fruits of modern economic dogma; especially its function in crafting a system of “bigness.” It was the age of the international corporation, the centralized domination of the means of production, and economic institutions as the mechanism for expansion of power.

And Schumacher fell back into an intellectual crisis from which he sought remedy in the various local-oriented theoretical dissents from the thrust of his own economic profession. Chief among these were the Distributists in England such as GK Chesterton and Hillaire Belloc. Small is Beautiful was the product of this transformation, and while many of the themes and phrases (such as fair trade and buying local) have percolated out into certain circles of the economic Left, Schumacher himself (following the Distributists) found intellectual rest in the Catholic tradition.

While Small is Beautiful is his most well-read book, the book he cherished more deeply was the book he felt was “what my life has been leading to.” Apparently, he made this claim as he handed the manuscript to his daughter on his deathbed. A Guide for the Perplexed is only 125 or so pages and in many ways is a personal reflection on the underlying framework upon which Small is Beautiful stands.

It cannot be described as a treaty, and is in many ways not entirely original, but rather summarizes ways of thinking that have disappeared under the long march of enlightenment-modernist thinking. Schumacher has, by the end of his life, grown critical of the influence of materialism and its almost imperialistic domination of the social sciences. The scientific revolution has for Schumacher tragically led to what C.S. Lewis termed the Abolition of Man.

Much can be said, and will be said, about Schumacher’s thesis, but a specific section motivated this brief essay.

Schumacher places a dose of responsibility at the feet of rationalists like Descartes for closing off their mind to the wisdom of ages, and instead narrowing their focus to precision about unconnected minutia and useful “facts.” Schumacher might wonder with pain as had TS Eliot:

Where the the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.

Schumacher observes that modern man has abandoned what, despite their (important) differences, had held Aquinas and Augustine together: the view of truth that demands all things be connected to the whole, that in acquiring knowledge, we seek to contribute to our holistic view of the world-reality, what Richard Weaver elegantly described as our “metaphysical dream of the world.” This purpose of knowledge had a place for the natural sciences, for in observing the world around us, we can continue to shape our world picture. For if all of nature was a created product of Mind, then all that is physical is unified and aids in our quest to see the handiwork of God.

But we abandoned what Schumacher calls this “science for understanding” for the modern “science for manipulation.” The “truth that sets man free” is the former, while the data gathered in the function of the latter enslaves him. Francis Bacon, the founder of modern science, indicts himself when he claims that “knowledge is power.” Here lies a fundamental checkpoint in the corruption of modern man. Schumacher echoes the insights of Romano Guardini in observing that “science for manipulation” was inevitably bound to lead eventually “from the manipulation of nature to that of people.”

The older understanding of science’s function was a derivative of that ancient value of wisdom. “Science for understanding” therefore can be seen under that head, while it was “science for manipulation” that we in our time mean by the simple label of “science.” It is the job of scientists, and those engaging in scientific activities, to increase man’s ability to manipulate, conquer, and dominate the world in which he finds himself.

Scientific inquiry, Schumacher says echoing St. Augustine, is a weapon of spiritual destruction unless it is always subordinated and bound by the pursuit of wisdom. The practical benefits of science are to be judged in the constant subordination of their effects to wisdom. The problem with the modernist thinker, denying that eternal things such as wisdom can be sought after, is that he has ripped science for manipulation from the anchor of science for understanding. Science for manipulation thus develops into its own end and we enter into an age of hysterical innovation and mindless hyper-development of new creations, all of which begin to reflect that dark state of our souls.

The old science—wisdom, or science for understanding—was directed toward the “Good, the True, and the Beautiful” while the new science is directed toward material power, degrading consumption, the destruction of nature, and the closing off of our souls to the Heavens.

The old science looked upon nature as God’s handiwork; the new science tends to look upon nature as an adversary to be conquered or a resource to be quarried and exploited.

There is much more in Schumacher’s reflection, the product of a life in journey away from his professional roots. But this small taste of his analysis of our present condition will be built upon in later posts.