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Weber-Science-as-a-Vocation.pdf
Science as a Vocation
Science as a Vocation
by Max Weber
Published as "Wissenschaft als Beruf," Gesammlte Aufsaetze zur Wissenschaftslehre (Tubingen, 1922), pp.
524-55. Originally a speech at Munich University, 1918, published in 1919 by Duncker & Humblodt,
Munich.
From H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (Translated and edited), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, pp.
129-156, New York: Oxford University Press, 1946.
You wish me to speak about 'Science as a Vocation.' Now, we political economists have a pedantic custom,
which I should like to follow, of always beginning with the external conditions. In this case, we begin with
the question: What are the conditions of science as a vocation in the material sense of the term? Today this
question means, practically and essentially: What are the prospects of a graduate student who is resolved to
dedicate himself professionally to science in university life? In order to understand the peculiarity of German
conditions it is expedient to proceed by comparison and to realize the conditions abroad. In this respect, the
United States stands in the sharpest contrast with Germany, so we shall focus upon that country.
Everybody knows that in Germany the career of the young man who is dedicated to science normally begins
with the position of Privatdozent. After having conversed with and received the consent of the respective
specialists, he takes up residence on the basis of a book and, usually, a rather formal examination before the
faculty of the university. Then he gives a course of lectures without receiving any salary other than the
lecture fees of his students. It is up to him to determine, within his venia legendi, the topics upon which he
lectures.
In the United States the academic career usually begins in quite a different manner, namely, by employment
as an 'assistant.' This is similar to the great institutes of the natural science and medical faculties in Germany,
where usually only a fraction of the assistants try to habilitate themselves as Privatdozenten and often only
later in their career.
Practically, this contrast means that the career of the academic man in Germany is generally based upon
plutocratic prerequisites. For it is extremely hazardous for a young scholar without funds to expose himself
to the conditions of the academic career. He must be able to endure this condition for at least a number of
years without knowing whether he will have the opportunity to move into a position which pays well enough
for maintenance.
In the United States, where the bureaucratic system exists, the young academic man is paid from the very
beginning. To be sure, his salary is modest; usually it is hardly as much as the wages of a semi-skilled
laborer. Yet he begins with a seemingly secure position, for he draws a fixed salary. As a rule, however,
notice may be given to him just as with German assistants, and frequently he definitely has to face this
should he not come up to expectations.
These expectations are such that the young academic in America must draw large crowds of students. This
cannot happen to a German docent; once one has him, one cannot get rid of him. To be sure, he cannot raise
any 'claims.' But he has the understandable notion that after years of work he has a sort of moral right to
expect some consideration. He also expects--and this is often quite important--that one have some regard for
him when the question of the possible habilitation of other Privatdozenten comes up.
Whether, in principle, one should habilitate every scholar who is qualified or whether one should consider
enrollments, and hence give the existing staff a monopoly to teach--that is an awkward dilemma. It is
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associated with the dual aspect of the academic profession, which we shall discuss presently. In general, one
decides in favor of the second alternative. But this increases the danger that the respective full professor,
however conscientious he is, will prefer his own disciples. If I may speak of my personal attitude, I must say
I have followed the principle that a scholar promoted by me must legitimize and habilitate himself with
somebody else at another university. But the result has been that one of my best disciples has been turned
down at another university because nobody there believed this to be the reason.
A further difference between Germany and the United States is that in Germany the Privatdozent generally
teaches fewer courses than he wishes. According to his formal right, he can give any course in his field. But
to do so would be considered an improper lack of consideration for the older docents. As a rule, the full
professor gives the 'big' courses and the docent confines himself to secondary ones. The advantage of these
arrangements is that during his youth the academic man is free to do scientific work, although this restriction
of the opportunity to teach is somewhat involuntary.
In America, the arrangement is different in principle. Precisely during the early years of his career the
assistant is absolutely overburdened just because he is paid. In a department of German, for instance, the full
professor will give a three-hour course on Goethe and that is enough, whereas the young assistant is happy if,
besides the drill in the German language, his twelve weekly teaching hours include assignments of, say,
Uhland. The officials prescribe the curriculum, and in this the assistant is just as dependent as the institute
assistant in Germany.
Of late we can observe distinctly that the German universities in the broad fields of science develop in the
direction of the American system. The large institutes of medicine or natural science are 'state capitalist'
enterprises, which cannot be managed without very considerable funds. Here we encounter the same
condition that is found wherever capitalist enterprise comes into operation: the 'separation of the worker from
his means of production.' The worker, that is, the assistant, is dependent upon the implements that the state
puts at his disposal; hence he is just as dependent upon the head of the institute as is the employee in a
factory upon the management. For, subjectively and in good faith, the director believes that this institute is
'his,' and he manages its affairs. Thus the assistant's position is often as precarious as is that of any 'quasi-
proletarian' existence and just as precarious as the position of the assistant in the American university.
In very important respects German university life is being Americanized, as is German life in general. This
development, I am convinced, will engulf those disciplines in which the craftsman personally owns the tools,
essentially the library, as is still the case to a large extent in my own field. This development corresponds
entirely to what happened to the artisan of the past and it is now fully under way.
As with all capitalist and at the same time bureaucratized enterprises, there are indubitable advantages in all
this. But the 'spirit' that rules in these affairs is different from the historical atmosphere of the German
university. An extraordinarily wide gulf, externally and internally, exists between the chief of these large,
capitalist, university enterprises and the usual full professor of the old style. This contrast also holds for the
inner attitude, a matter that I shall not go into here. Inwardly as well as externally, the old university
constitution has become fictitious. What has remained and what has been essentially increased is a factor
peculiar to the university career: the question whether or not such a Privatdozent, and still more an assistant,
will ever succeed in moving into the position of a full professor or even become the head of an institute. That
is simply a hazard. Certainly, chance does not rule alone, but it rules to an unusually high degree. I know of
hardly any career on earth where chance plays such a role. I may say so all the more since I personally owe it
to some mere accidents that during my very early years I was appointed to a full professorship in a discipline
in which men of my generation undoubtedly had achieved more that I had. And, indeed, I fancy, on the basis
of this experience, that I have a sharp eye for the undeserved fate of the many whom accident has cast in the
opposite direction and who within this selective apparatus in spite of all their ability do not attain the
positions that are due them.
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The fact that hazard rather than ability plays so large a role is not alone or even predominantly owing to the
'human, all too human' factors, which naturally occur in the process of academic selection as in any other
selection. It would be unfair to hold the personal inferiority of faculty members or educational ministries
responsible for the fact that so many mediocrities undoubtedly play an eminent role at the universities. The
predominance of mediocrity is rather due to the laws of human co-operation, especially of the co-operation
of several bodies, and, in this case, co-operation of the faculties who recommend and of the ministries of
education.
A counterpart are the events at the papal elections, which can be traced over many centuries and which are
the most important controllable examples of a selection of the same nature as the academic selection. The
cardinal who is said to be the 'favorite' only rarely has a chance to win out. The rule is rather that the Number
Two cardinal or the Number Three wins out. The same holds for the President of the United States. Only
exceptionally does the first-rate and most prominent man get the nomination of the convention. Mostly the
Number Two and often the Number Three men are nominated and later run for election. The Americans have
already formed technical sociological terms for these categories, and it would be quite interesting to enquire
into the laws of selection by a collective will by studying these examples, but we shall not do so here. Yet
these laws also hold for the collegiate bodies of German universities, and one must not be surprised at the
frequent mistakes that are made, but rather at the number of correct appointments, the proportion of which, in
spite of all, is very considerable. Only where parliaments, as in some countries, or monarchs, as in Germany
thus far (both work out in the same way), or revolutionary power-holders, as in Germany now, intervene for
political reasons in academic selections, can one be certain that convenient mediocrities or strainers will have
the opportunities all to themselves.
No university teacher likes to be reminded of discussions of appointments, for they are seldom agreeable.
And yet I may say that in the numerous cases known to me there was, without exception, the good will to
allow purely objective reasons to be decisive.
One must be clear about another thing: that the decision over academic fates is so largely a 'hazard' is not
merely because of the insufficiency of the selection by the collective formation of will. Every young man
who feels called to scholarship has to realize clearly that the task before him has a double aspect. He must
qualify not only as a scholar but also as a teacher. And the two do not at all coincide. One can be a
preeminent scholar and at the same time an abominably poor teacher. May I remind you of the teaching of
men like Helmholtz or Ranke; and they are not by any chance rare exceptions.
Now, matters are such that German universities, especially the small universities, are engaged in a most
ridiculous competition for enrollments. The landlords of rooming houses in university cities celebrate the
advent of the thousandth student by a festival, and they would love to celebrate Number Two Thousand by a
torchlight procession. The interest in fees--and one should openly admit it--is affected by appointments in the
neighboring fields that 'draw crowds.' And quite apart from this, the number of students enrolled is a test of
qualification, which may be grasped in terms of numbers, whereas the qualification for scholarship is
imponderable and, precisely with audacious innovators, often debatable--that is only natural. Almost
everybody thus is affected by the suggestion of the immeasurable blessing and value of large enrollments. To
say of a docent that he is a poor teacher is usually to pronounce an academic sentence of death, even if he is
the foremost scholar in the world. And the question whether he is a good or a poor teacher is answered by the
enrollments with which the students condescendingly honor him.
It is a fact that whether or not the students flock to a teacher is determined in large measure, larger than one
would believe possible, by purely external things: temperament and even the inflection of his voice. After
rather extensive experience and sober reflection, I have a deep distrust of courses that draw crowds, however
unavoidable they may be. Democracy should be used only where it is in place. Scientific training, as we are
held to practice it in accordance with the tradition of German universities, is the affair of an intellectual
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aristocracy, and we should not hide this from ourselves. To be sure, it is true that to present scientific
problems in such a manner that an untutored but receptive mind can understand them and--what for us is
alone decisive--can come to think about them independently is perhaps the most difficult pedagogical task of
all. But whether this task is or is not realized is not decided by enrollment figures. And--to return to our
theme--this very art is a personal gift and by no means coincides with the scientific qualifications of the
scholar.
In contrast to France, Germany has no corporate body of 'immortals' in science. According to German
tradition, the universities shall do justice to the demands both of research and of instruction. Whether the
abilities for both are found together in a man is a matter of absolute chance. Hence academic life is a mad
hazard. If the young scholar asks for my advice with regard to habilitation, the responsibility of encouraging
him can hardly be borne. If he is a Jew, of course one says lasciate ogni speranza. But one must ask every
other man: Do you in all conscience believe that you can stand seeing mediocrity after mediocrity, year after
year, climb beyond you, without becoming embittered and without coming to grief? Naturally, one always
receives the answer: 'Of course, I live only for my "calling." ' Yet, I have found that only a few men could
endure this situation without coming to grief.
This much I deem necessary to say about the external conditions of the academic man's vocation. But I
believe that actually you wish to hear of something else, namely, of the inward calling for science. In our
time, the internal situation, in contrast to the organization of science as a vocation, is first of all conditioned
by the facts that science has entered a phase of specialization previously unknown and that this will forever
remain the case. Not only externally, but inwardly, matters stand at a point where the individual can acquire
the sure consciousness of achieving something truly perfect in the field of science only in case he is a strict
specialist.
All work that overlaps neighboring fields, such as we occasionally undertake and which the sociologists must
necessarily undertake again and again, is burdened with the resigned realization that at best one provides the
specialist with useful questions upon which he would not so easily hit from his own specialized point of
view. One's own work must inevitably remain highly imperfect. Only by strict specialization can the
scientific worker become fully conscious, for once and perhaps never again in his lifetime, that he has
achieved something that will endure. A really definitive and good accomplishment is today always a
specialized accomplishment. And whoever lacks the capacity to put on blinders, so to speak, and to come up
to the idea that the fate of his soul depends upon whether or not he makes the correct conjecture at this
passage of this manuscript may as well stay away from science. He will never have what one may call the
'personal experience' of science. Without this strange intoxication, ridiculed by every outsider; without this
passion, this 'thousands of years must pass before you enter into life and thousands more wait in silence'--
according to whether or not you succeed in making this conjecture; without this, you have no calling for
science and you should do something else. For nothing is worthy of man as man unless he can pursue it with
passionate devotion.
Yet it is a fact that no amount of such enthusiasm, however sincere and profound it may be, can compel a
problem to yield scientific results. Certainly enthusiasm is a prerequisite of the 'inspiration' which is decisive.
Nowadays in circles of youth there is a widespread notion that science has become a problem in calculation,
fabricated in laboratories or statistical filing systems just as 'in a factory,' a calculation involving only the
cool intellect and not one's 'heart and soul.' First of all one must say that such comments lack all clarity about
what goes on in a factory or in a laboratory. In both some idea has to occur to someone's mind, and it has to
be a correct idea, if one is to accomplish anything worthwhile. And such intuition cannot be forced. It has
nothing to do with any cold calculation. Certainly calculation is also an indispensable prerequisite. No
sociologist, for instance, should think himself too good, even in his old age, to make tens of thousands of
quite trivial computations in his head and perhaps for months at a time. One cannot with impunity try to
transfer this task entirely to mechanical assistants if one wishes to figure something, even though the final
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result is often small indeed. But if no 'idea' occurs to his mind about the direction of his computations and,
during his computations, about the bearing of the emergent single results, then even this small result will not
be yielded.
Normally such an 'idea' is prepared only on the soil of very hard work, but certainly this is not always the
case. Scientifically, a dilettante's idea may have the very same or even a greater bearing for science than that
of a specialist. Many of our very best hypotheses and insights are due precisely to dilettantes. The dilettante
differs from the expert, as Helmholtz has said of Robert Mayer, only in that he lacks a firm and reliable work
procedure. Consequently he is usually not in the position to control, to estimate, or to exploit the idea in its
bearings. The idea is not a substitute for work; and work, in turn, cannot substitute for or compel an idea, just
as little as enthusiasm can. Both, enthusiasm and work, and above all both of them jointly, can entice the
idea.
Ideas occur to us when they please, not when it pleases us. The best ideas do indeed occur to one's mind in
the way in which Ihering describes it: when smoking a cigar on the sofa; or as Helmholtz states of himself
with scientific exactitude: when taking a walk on a slowly ascending street; or in a similar way. In any case,
ideas come when we do not expect them, and not when we are brooding and searching at our desks. Yet
ideas would certainly not come to mind had we not brooded at our desks and searched for answers with
passionate devotion.
However this may be, the scientific worker has to take into his bargain the risk that enters into all scientific
work: Does an 'idea' occur or does it not? He may be an excellent worker and yet never have had any
valuable idea of his own. It is a grave error to believe that this is so only in science, and that things for
instance in a business office are different from a laboratory. A merchant or a big industrialist without
'business imagination,' that is, without ideas or ideal intuitions, will for all his life remain a man who would
better have remained a clerk or a technical official. He will never be truly creative in organization.
Inspiration in the field of science by no means plays any greater role, as academic conceit fancies, than it
does in the field of mastering problems of practical life by a modern entrepreneur. On the other hand, and
this also is often misconstrued, inspiration plays no less a role in science than it does in the realm of art. It is
a childish notion to think that a mathematician attains any scientifically valuable results by sitting at his desk
with a ruler, calculating machines or other mechanical means. The mathematical imagination of a
Weierstrass is naturally quite differently oriented in meaning and result than is the imagination of an artist,
and differs basically in quality. But the psychological processes do not differ. Both are frenzy (in the sense of
Plato's 'mania') and 'inspiration.'
Now, whether we have scientific inspiration depends upon destinies that are hidden from us, and besides
upon 'gifts.' Last but not least, because of this indubitable truth, a very understandable attitude has become
popular, especially among youth, and has put them in the service of idols whose cult today occupies a broad
place on all street corners and in all periodicals. These idols are 'personality' and 'personal experience.' Both
are intimately connected, the notion prevails that the latter constitutes the former and belongs to it. People
belabor themselves in trying to 'experience' life--for that befits a personality, conscious of its rank and
station. And if we do not succeed in 'experiencing' life, we must at least pretend to have this gift of grace.
Formerly we called this 'experience,' in plain German, 'sensation'; and I believe that we then had a more
adequate idea of what personality is and what it signifies.
Ladies and gentlemen. In the field of science only he who is devoted solely to the work at hand has
'personality.' And this holds not only for the field of science; we know of no great artist who has ever done
anything but serve his work and only his work. As far as his art is concerned, even with a personality of
Goethe's rank, it has been detrimental to take the liberty of trying to make his 'life' into a work of art. And
even if one doubts this, one has to be a Goethe in order to dare permit oneself such liberty. Everybody will
admit at least this much: that even with a man like Goethe, who appears once in a thousand years, this liberty
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did not go unpaid for. In politics matters are not different, but we shall not discuss that today. In the field of
science, however, the man who makes himself the impresario of the subject to which he should be devoted,
and steps upon the stage and seeks to legitimate himself through 'experience,' asking: How can I prove that I
am something other than a mere 'specialist' and how can I manage to say something in form or in content that
nobody else has ever said ?--such a man is no 'personality.' Today such conduct is a crowd phenomenon, and
it always makes a petty impression and debases the one who is thus concerned. Instead of this, an inner
devotion to the task, and that alone, should lift the scientist to the height and dignity of the subject he
pretends to serve. And in this it is not different with the artist.
In contrast with these preconditions which scientific work shares with art, science has a fate that profoundly
distinguishes it from artistic work. Scientific work is chained to the course of progress; whereas in the realm
of art there is no progress in the same sense. It is not true that the work of art of a period that has worked out
new technical means, or, for instance, the laws of perspective, stands therefore artistically higher than a work
of art devoid of all knowledge of those means and laws--if its form does justice to the material, that is, if its
object has been chosen and formed so that it could be artistically mastered without applying those conditions
and means. A work of art which is genuine 'fulfilment' is never surpassed; it will never be antiquated.
Individuals may differ in appreciating the personal significance of works of art, but no one will ever be able
to say of such a work that it is 'outstripped by another work which is also 'fulfilment.'
In science, each of us knows that what he has accomplished will be antiquated in ten, twenty, fifty years.
That is the fate to which science is subjected; it is the very meaning of scientific work, to which it is devoted
in a quite specific sense, as compared with other spheres of culture for which in general the same holds.
Every scientific 'fulfilment' raises new 'questions'; it asks to be 'surpassed' and outdated. Whoever wishes to
serve science has to resign himself to this fact. Scientific works certainly can last as 'gratifications' because of
their artistic quality, or they may remain important as a means of training. Yet they will be surpassed
scientifically--let that be repeated--for it is our common fate and, more, our common goal. We cannot work
without hoping that others will advance further than we have. In principle, this progress goes on ad infinitum.
And with this we come to inquire into the meaning of science. For, after all, it is not self-evident that
something subordinate to such a law is sensible and meaningful in itself. Why does one engage in doing
something that in reality never comes, and never can come, to an end?
One does it, first, for purely practical, in the broader sense of the word, for technical, purposes: in order to be
able to orient our practical activities to the expectations that scientific experience places at our disposal.
Good. Yet this has meaning only to practitioners. What is the attitude of the academic man towards his
vocation--that is, if he is at all in quest of such a personal attitude? He maintains that he engages in 'science
for science's sake' and not merely because others, by exploiting science, bring about commercial or technical
success and can better feed, dress, illuminate, and govern. But what does he who allows himself to be
integrated into this specialized organization, running on ad infinitum, hope to accomplish that is significant
in these productions that are always destined to be outdated? This question requires a few general
considerations.
Scientific progress is a fraction, the most important fraction, of the process of intellectualization which we
have been undergoing for thousands of years and which nowadays is usually judged in such an extremely
negative way. Let us first clarify what this intellectualist rationalization, created by science and by
scientifically oriented technology, means practically.
Does it mean that we, today, for instance, everyone sitting in this hall, have a greater knowledge of the
conditions of life under which we exist than has an American Indian or a Hottentot? Hardly. Unless he is a
physicist, one who rides on the streetcar has no idea how the car happened to get into motion. And he does
not need to know. He is satisfied that he may 'count' on the behavior of the streetcar, and he orients his
conduct according to this expectation; but he knows nothing about what it takes to produce such a car so that
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it can move. The savage knows incomparably more about his tools. When we spend money today I bet that
even if there are colleagues of political economy here in the hall, almost every one of them will hold a
different answer in readiness to the question: How does it happen that one can buy something for money--
sometimes more and sometimes less ? The savage knows what he does in order to get his daily food and
which institutions serve him in this pursuit. The increasing intellectualization and rationalization do not,
therefore, indicate an increased and general knowledge of the conditions under which one lives.
It means something else, namely, the knowledge or belief that if one but wished one could learn it at any
time. Hence, it means that principally there are no mysterious incalculable forces that come into play, but
rather that one can, in principle, master all things by calculation. This means that the world is disenchanted.
One need no longer have recourse to magical means in order to master or implore the spirits, as did the
savage, for whom such mysterious powers existed. Technical means and calculations perform the service.
This above all is what intellectualization means.
Now, this process of disenchantment, which has continued to exist in Occidental culture for millennia, and,
in general, this 'progress,' to which science belongs as a link and motive force, do they have any meanings
that go beyond the purely practical and technical? You will find this question raised in the most principled
form in the works of Leo Tolstoi. He came to raise the question in a peculiar way. All his broodings
increasingly revolved around the problem of whether or not death is a meaningful phenomenon. And his
answer was: for civilized man death has no meaning. It has none because the individual life of civilized man,
placed into an infinite 'progress,' according to its own imminent meaning should never come to an end; for
there is always a further step ahead of one who stands in the march of progress. And no man who comes to
die stands upon the peak which lies in infinity. Abraham, or some peasant of the past, died 'old and satiated
with life' because he stood in the organic cycle of life; because his life, in terms of its meaning and on the eve
of his days, had given to him what life had to offer; because for him there remained no puzzles he might wish
to solve; and therefore he could have had 'enough' of life. Whereas civilized man, placed in the midst of the
continuous enrichment of culture by ideas, knowledge, and problems, may become 'tired of life' but not
'satiated with life.' He catches only the most minute part of what the life of the spirit brings forth ever anew,
and what he seizes is always something provisional and not definitive, and therefore death for him is a
meaningless occurrence. And because death is meaningless, civilized life as such is meaningless; by its very
'progressiveness' it gives death the imprint of meaninglessness. Throughout his late novels one meets with
this thought as the keynote of the Tolstoyan art.
What stand should one take? Has 'progress' as such a recognizable meaning that goes beyond the technical,
so that to serve it is a meaningful vocation? The question must be raised. But this is no longer merely the
question of man's calling for science, hence, the problem of what science as a vocation means to its devoted
disciples. To raise this question is to ask for the vocation of science within the total life of humanity. What is
the value of science?
Here the contrast between the past and the present is tremendous. You will recall the wonderful image at the
beginning of the seventh book of Plato's Republic: those enchained cavemen whose faces are turned toward
the stone wall before them. Behind them lies the source of the light which they cannot see. They are
concerned only with the shadowy images that this light throws upon the wall, and they seek to fathom their
interrelations. Finally one of them succeeds in shattering his fetters, turns around, and sees the sun. Blinded,
he gropes about and stammers of what he saw. The others say he is raving. But gradually he learns to behold
the light, and then his task is to descend to the cavemen and to lead them to the light. He is the philosopher;
the sun, however, is the truth of science, which alone seizes not upon illusions and shadows but upon the true
being.
Well, who today views science in such a manner ? Today youth feels rather the reverse: the intellectual
constructions of science constitute an unreal realm of artificial abstractions, which with their bony hands
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seek to grasp the blood-and-the-sap of true life without ever catching up with it. But here in life, in what for
Plato was the play of shadows on the walls of the cave, genuine reality is pulsating; and the rest are
derivatives of life, lifeless ghosts, and nothing else. How did this change come about?
Plato's passionate enthusiasm in The Republic must, in the last analysis, be explained by the fact that for the
first time the concept, one of the great tools of all scientific knowledge, had been consciously discovered.
Socrates had discovered it in its bearing. He was not the only man in the world to discover it. In India one
finds the beginnings of a logic that is quite similar to that of Aristotle's. But nowhere else do we find this
realization of the significance of the concept. In Greece, for the first time, appeared a handy means by which
one could put the logical screws upon somebody so that he could not come out without admitting either that
he knew nothing or that this and nothing else was truth, the eternal truth that never would vanish as the
doings of the blind men vanish. That was the tremendous experience which dawned upon the disciples of
Socrates. And from this it seemed to follow that if one only found the right concept of the beautiful, the
good, or, for instance, of bravery, of the soul--or whatever--that then one could also grasp its true being. And
this, in turn, seemed to open the way for knowing and for teaching how to act rightly in life and, above all,
how to act as a citizen of the state; for this question was everything to the Hellenic man, whose thinking was
political throughout. And for these reasons one engaged in science.
The second great tool of scientific work, the rational experiment, made its appearance at the side of this
discovery of the Hellenic spirit during the Renaissance period. The experiment is a means of reliably
controlling experience. Without it, present-day empirical science would be impossible. There were
experiments earlier; for instance, in India physiological experiments were made in the service of ascetic yoga
technique; in Hellenic antiquity, mathematical experiments were made for purposes of war technology; and
in the Middle Ages, for purposes of mining. But to raise the experiment to a principle of research was the
achievement of the Renaissance. They were the great innovators in art, who were the pioneers of experiment.
Leonardo and his like and, above all, the sixteenth-century experimenters in music with their experimental
pianos were characteristic. From these circles the experiment entered science, especially through Galileo, and
it entered theory through Bacon; and then it was taken over by the various exact disciplines of the continental
universities, first of all those of Italy and then those of the Netherlands.
What did science mean to these men who stood at the threshold of modern times? To artistic experimenters
of the type of Leonardo and the musical innovators, science meant the path to true art, and that meant for
them the path to true nature. Art was to be raised to the rank of a science, and this meant at the same time and
above all to raise the artist to the rank of the doctor, socially and with reference to the meaning of his life.
This is the ambition on which, for instance, Leonardo's sketch book was based. And today ? 'Science as the
way to nature' would sound like blasphemy to youth. Today, youth proclaims the opposite: redemption from
the intellectualism of science in order to return to one's own nature and therewith to nature in general.
Science as a way to art? Here no criticism is even needed.
But during the period of the rise of the exact sciences one expected a great deal more. If you recall
Swammerdam's statement, 'Here I bring you the proof of God's providence in the anatomy of a louse,' you
will see what the scientific worker, influenced (indirectly) by Protestantism and Puritanism, conceived to be
his task: to show the path to God. People no longer found this path among the philosophers, with their
concepts and deductions. All pietist theology of the time, above all Spener, knew that God was not to be
found along the road by which the Middle Ages had sought him. God is hidden, His ways are not our ways,
His thoughts are not our thoughts. In the exact sciences, however, where one could physically grasp His
works, one hoped to come upon the traces of what He planned for the world. And today? Who--aside from
certain big children who are indeed found in the natural sciences--still believes that the findings of
astronomy, biology, physics, or chemistry could teach us anything about the meaning of the world? If there is
any such 'meaning,' along what road could one come upon its tracks? If these natural sciences lead to
8
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