A Guide for the Perplexed


A Guide for the Perplexed is a short book by E. F. Schumacher, published in 1977. The title is a reference to Maimonides's The Guide for the Perplexed. Schumacher himself considered A Guide for the Perplexed to be his most important achievement, although he was better known for his 1973 environmental economics bestseller Small Is Beautiful, which made him a leading figure within the ecology movement. His daughter wrote that her father handed her the book on his deathbed, five days before he died and he told her "this is what my life has been leading to". As the Chicago Tribune wrote, "A Guide for the Perplexed is really a statement of the philosophical underpinnings that inform Small Is Beautiful".
Schumacher describes his book as being concerned with how humans live in the world. It is also a treatise on the nature and organisation of knowledge and is something of an attack on what Schumacher calls "materialistic scientism". Schumacher argues that the current philosophical "maps" that dominate western thought and science are both overly narrow and based on some false premises. However, this book is only in small part a critique.

Four Great Truths

Schumacher put forward what he considers to be the four great truths of philosophy:
Schumacher was very much in favor of the scientific spirit, but felt that the dominant methodology within science, which he called materialistic scientism, was flawed and stood in the way of achieving knowledge in any other arena than inanimate nature. Schumacher believed that this flaw originated in the writings of Descartes and Francis Bacon, when modern science was first established.
He makes a distinction between the descriptive and instructional sciences. According to Schumacher the descriptive sciences are primarily concerned with what can be seen or otherwise experienced, e.g. botany and sociology, while the instructional sciences are concerned with how certain systems work and can be manipulated to produce certain results, e.g. biology and chemistry. Instructional science is primarily based on evidence gained from experimentation.
Materialistic scientism is based on the methodology of the latter, which developed to study and experiment with inanimate matter. According to Schumacher many philosophers of science fail to recognize the difference between descriptive and instructional science, or ascribe this difference to stages in the evolution of a specific science, which for these philosophers means that the instructional sciences are seen as being the most advanced variety of science.
He is particularly offended by the view that instructional science is the most advanced form of science, because for Schumacher, it is the study of the low hanging fruit of inanimate matter, or less metaphorically the study of the lowest and least complex level of being. As Schumacher sees it, knowledge gained about the higher levels of being, while far harder to get and far less certain, is all the more valuable.
He argues that applying the standards and procedures of instructional science to descriptive sciences is erroneous, because in the descriptive fields it is simply not possible to use the experimental techniques of instructional sciences. Experimentation is an appropriate method when dealing with inanimate matter, but applying it to the living world is liable to destroy or damage living things and systems, and is therefore inappropriate.
He uses the term scientism because he argues that many people, including some philosophers of science, have misunderstood the theory behind instructional science and instead believe that it produces truth. But the instructional sciences are based on induction; and as David Hume famously points out induction is not the same as truth. Furthermore, according to Schumacher, instructional sciences are primarily concerned only with the parts of truth that are useful for manipulation, i.e. they focus on those instructions which are necessary to reliably produce certain results. For Schumacher, instructional sciences therefore produce theories which are useful: pragmatic truths. By contrast, Schumacher argues that the descriptive sciences are interested in the truth in the wider sense of the word.
He argues that materialistic scientism follows a policy of leaving something out if it is in doubt. Consequently, the maps of western science fail to show large 'unorthodox' parts of both theory and practice of science and social science, and reveal a complete disregard for art and many other high level humanistic qualities. Such an approach, Schumacher argues, provides a grey, limited, utilitarian worldview without room for vitally important phenomena like beauty and meaning.
He observes that the mere mention of spirituality and spiritual phenomena in academic discussion is seen among scientists as a sign of 'mental deficiency'. Schumacher argues that where there is near total agreement a subject becomes effectively dead; it is therefore the subjects where there is doubt that deserve the most intense research. Schumacher believes in contrast to materialistic science that what is in doubt should be shown prominently, not hidden away or ignored.
His biggest complaint against materialistic scientism is that it rejects the validity of certain questions, which for Schumacher are actually the most important questions of all. Materialistic scientism rejects the idea of levels of being, but for Schumacher this leads to a one-sided view of nature. For Schumacher, you can learn much about humanity by studying from the perspective of minerals, plants and animals, because humans contain the lower levels of being. But that is not the full or even the most important part of the story, as he puts "...everything can be learned about him except that which makes us human."

Evolutionism

Schumacher first states that the evolutionist doctrine clearly sits in the descriptive sciences rather than instructive sciences. Schumacher accepts that evolution as a generalization within the descriptive science of biological change has been established beyond any doubt whatsoever. However, he considers the "evolutionist doctrine" to be a very different matter. The evolutionist doctrine purports to prove and explain biological change in the same manner as the proof and explanation offered by the instructional sciences. Schumacher quotes the 1975 Encyclopædia Britannica as an example of this view: "Darwin did two things: he showed that evolution was in fact contradicting scriptural legends of creation and that its cause, natural selection, was automatic leaving no room for divine guidance or design."
He considers the evolutionist doctrine to be a major philosophical and scientific error. Schumacher argues that the evolutionist doctrine starts with the perfectly reasonable explanation of change in living beings, and then jumps to using it as an explanation for the development of consciousness, self-awareness, language, social institutions and the origin of life itself. Schumacher points out that making this conceptual leap simply does not meet the standards of scientific rigor and the uncritical acceptance of this leap is, for Schumacher, completely unscientific.

Levels of being

For Schumacher one of science's major mistakes has been rejecting the traditional philosophical and religious view that the universe is a hierarchy of being. Schumacher makes a restatement of the traditional chain of being.
He agrees with the view that there are four kingdoms: Mineral, Plant, Animal, Human. He argues that there are important differences of kind between each level of being. Between mineral and plant is the phenomenon of life. Schumacher says that although scientists say we should not use the phrase 'life energy', the difference between inorganic and organic matter still exists and has not been explained by science to the extent of rendering said phrase fully invalid. Schumacher points out that though we can recognize life and destroy it, we can't create it. Schumacher notes that the 'life sciences' are 'extraordinary' because they hardly ever deal with life as such, and instead content themselves with analyzing the "physico-chemical body which is life's carrier." Schumacher goes on to say there is nothing in physics or chemistry to explain the phenomenon of life.
For Schumacher, a similar jump in level of being takes place between plant and animal, which is differentiated by the phenomenon of consciousness. We can recognize consciousness, not least because we can knock an animal unconscious, but also because animals exhibit at minimum primitive thought and intelligence.
The next level, according to Schumacher, is between Animal and Human, which are differentiated by the phenomenon of self-consciousness or self awareness. Self-consciousness is the reflective awareness of one's consciousness and thoughts.
Schumacher realizes that the terms—life, consciousness and self-consciousness—are subject to misinterpretation so he suggests that the differences can best be expressed as an equation which can be written thus:
  • "Mineral" = m
  • "Plant" = m + x
  • "Animal" = m + x + y
  • "Human" = m + x + y + z
In his theory, these three factors represent ontological discontinuities. He argues that the differences can be likened to differences in dimension; and from one perspective it could be argued that only humans have actualized existence insofar as they possess life, consciousness and self-consciousness. Schumacher uses this perspective to contrast with the materialistic scientism view, which argues that what is true is inanimate matter, denying the realness of life, consciousness and self-consciousness, despite the fact each individual can verify those phenomena from their own experience.
He directs our attention to the fact that science has generally avoided seriously discussing these discontinuities, because they present such difficulties for strictly materialistic science, and they largely remain mysteries.
Next he considers the animal model of humanity which has grown popular in science. Schumacher notes that within the humanities the distinction between consciousness and self consciousness is now seldom drawn. Consequently, people have become increasingly uncertain about whether there is any difference between animals and humans. Schumacher notes that a great deal of research about humans has been conducted by studying animals. Schumacher argues that this is analogous to studying physics in the hope of understanding life. Schumacher goes on to say that much can be learned about humanity by studying minerals, plants and animals because humans have inherited those levels of being: all, that is, "except that which makes him human."
Schumacher goes on to say that nothing is "more conducive to the brutalisation of the modern world" than calling humans the "naked ape". Schumacher argues that once people begin viewing humans as "animal machines" they soon begin treating them accordingly.
Schumacher argues that what defines humanity are our greatest achievements, not the common run of the mill things. He argues that human beings are open-ended because of self-awareness, which as distinct from life and consciousness has nothing mechanical or automatic about it. For Schumacher "the powers of self awareness are, essentially, a limitless potentiality rather than an actuality. They have to be developed and 'realized' by each human individual if one is to become truly human, that is to say, a person."