“人类的从众行为根植于人类的基因和大脑的潜意识之中”

无论“根源”怎样“不可捉摸”，想以此做分析，就必须对“从众行为”给出一个公理化的具有确定含义的表达式。这种表达式的内容应该是可观测的，或者说在观测的意义上是可以理解的。

“U=u(x1,x2) x1自己的选择，x2他人的选择，Du/dx1>0 du/dx2>0”

“效用”、“（自己或他人的）选择”各是如何定义的？

“可能会用到差分方程和偏微分方程组”

说几千字都不如直接给出这些方程，我们急切想看到的就是这些方程，它们几乎是本文的全部意义所在。

如果牛顿不给出万有引力定律的具体表达式，只说太阳与地球相互吸引，这种定律有什么物理意义吗？为什么地球不坠到太阳，不远离太阳，偏偏要“围着”太阳“转”？

太阳对月球的引力远大于地球对它的引力

为什么月球不是围着太阳转？？？

太阳对地球引力大于地球对太阳引力？天！

The Influence of the Natural Sciences on the Social Sciences

In the course of its slow development in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the study of economic and social phenomena was guided in the choice of its methods in the main by the nature of the problems it had to face. ^1.1 It gradually developed a technique appropriate to these problems without much reflection on the character of the methods or on their relation to that of other disciplines of knowledge. Students of political economy could describe it alternatively as a branch of science or of moral or social philosophy without the least qualms whether their subject was scientific or philosophical. The term science had not yet assumed the special narrow meaning it has today,^1.2 nor was there any distinction made which singled out the physical or natural sciences and attributed to them a special dignity. Those who devoted themselves to those fields indeed readily chose the designation of philosophy when they were concerned with the more general aspects of their problems,^1.3 and occasionally we even find ``natural philosophy'' contrasted with ``moral science.''

During the first half of the nineteenth century a new attitude made its appearance. The term science came more and more to be confined to the physical and biological disciplines which at the same time began to claim for themselves a special rigorousness and certainty which distinguished them from all others. Their success was such that they soon came to exercise an extraordinary fascination on those working in other fields, who rapidly began to imitate their teaching and vocabulary. Thus the tyranny commenced which the methods and technique of the Sciences^1.4 in the narrow sense of the term have ever since exercised over the other subjects. These became increasingly concerned to vindicate their equal status by showing that their methods were the same as those of their brilliantly successful sisters rather than by adapting their methods more and more to their own particular problems. And, although in the hundred and twenty years or so, during which this ambition to imitate Science in its methods rather than its spirit has now dominated social studies, it has contributed scarcely anything to our understanding of social phenomena, not only does it continue to confuse and discredit the work of the social disciplines, but demands for further attempts in this direction are still presented to us as the latest revolutionary innovations which, if adopted, will secure rapid undreamed of progress.

Let it be said at once, however, that those who were loudest in these demands were rarely themselves men who had noticeably enriched our knowledge of the Sciences. From Francis Bacon, the lord chancellor, who will forever remain the prototype of the ``demagogue of science,'' as he has justly been called, to Auguste Comte and the ``physicalists'' of our own day, the claims for the exclusive virtues of the specific methods employed by the natural sciences were mostly advanced by men whose right to speak on behalf of the scientists was not above suspicion, and who indeed in many cases had shown in the Sciences themselves as much bigoted prejudice as in their attitude to other subjects. Just as Francis Bacon opposed Copernican astronomy,^1.5 and as Comte taught that any too minute investigation of the phenomena by such instruments as the microscope was harmful and should be suppressed by the spiritual power of the positive society, because it tended to upset the laws of positive science, so this dogmatic attitude has so often misled men of this type in their own field that there should have been little reason to pay too much deference to their views about problems still more distant from the fields from which they derived their inspiration.

There is yet another qualification which the reader ought to keep in mind throughout the following discussion. The methods which scientists or men fascinated by the natural sciences have so often tried to force upon the social sciences were not always necessarily those which the scientists in fact followed in their own field, but rather those which they believed that they employed. This is not necessarily the same thing. The scientist reflecting and theorizing about his procedure is not always a reliable guide. The views about the character of the method of Science have undergone various fashions during the last few generations, while we must assume that the methods actually followed have remained essentially the same. But since it was what scientists believed that they did, and even the views which they had held some time before, which have influenced the social sciences, the following comments on the methods of the natural sciences also do not necessarily claim to be a true account of what the scientists in fact do, but an account of the views on the nature of scientific method which were dominant in recent times.

The history of this influence, the channels through which it operated, and the direction in which it affected social developments, will occupy us throughout the series of historical studies to which the present essay is designed to serve as an introduction. Before we trace the historical course of this influence and its effects, we shall here attempt to describe its general characteristics and the nature of the problems to which the unwarranted and unfortunate extensions of the habits of thought of the physical and biological sciences have given rise. There are certain typical elements of this attitude which we shall meet again and again and whose prima facie plausibility makes it necessary to examine them with some care. While in the particular historical instances it is not always possible to show how these characteristic views are connected with or derived from the habits of thought of the scientists, this is easier in a systematic survey.

It need scarcely be emphasized that nothing we shall have to say is aimed against the methods of Science in their proper sphere or is intended to throw the slightest doubt on their value. But to preclude any misunderstanding on this point we shall, wherever we are concerned, not with the general spirit of disinterested inquiry but with slavish imitation of the method and language of Science, speak of scientism or the scientistic prejudice. Although these terms are not completely unknown in English,^1.6they are actually borrowed from the French, where in recent years they have come to be generally used in very much the same sense in which they will be used here.^1.7It should be noted that, in the sense in which we shall use these terms, they describe, of course, an attitude which is decidedly unscientific in the true sense of the word, since it involves a mechanical and uncritical application of habits of thought to fields different from those in which they have been formed. The scientistic as distinguished from the scientific view is not an unprejudiced but a very prejudiced approach which, before it has considered its subject, claims to know what is the most appropriate way of investigating it.^1.8

It would be convenient if a similar term were available to describe the characteristic mental attitude of the engineer which, although in many respects closely related to scientism, is yet distinct from it but which we intend to consider here in connection with the latter. No single word of equal expressiveness suggests itself, however, and we shall have to be content to describe this second element so characteristic of nineteenth- and twentieth-century thought as the ``engineering type of mind.''

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The Counter-Revolution of Science

Studies on The Abuse of Reason

F. A. Hayek

[此贴子已经被作者于2005-4-1 10:43:04编辑过]