Science and lhe West's Decline
FOGELMAN, EDWIN
Science and the West's Decline Reviewed by Edwin Fogelman Contributor to "Commentary" and other periodicals The Tower and the Abyss. By Erich Kahler. Braziller. 327 pp. $6.00. This is a curious...
...But his thesis rests mainly on an examination of literary texts...
...Kahler's view, science itself is the culprit—"the supreme, impersonal, collective authority...
...But the important problem is this: Having applied scientific method to the investigation and exploitation of the physical universe —with results that are both wondrous and terrifying—can we now uproot the institutions upon which the achievements of science depend...
...In Mr...
...Kahler's approach...
...It goes without saying that a return to communal forms of organization cannot be accomplished on any significant scale without sacrificing the advantages which modern technology, based on science, affords...
...The healthy personality can be restored through participation in communal groups devoted to general human values...
...But respect for the work itself is bound to interfere with the clarity and coherence of the historical analysis...
...There has been a disintegration "from without"—characterized by a disastrous split between the human and functional parts of the individual...
...Kahler treats can hardly be doubted, and in this sense his book is convincing...
...But neither do we go to D. H. Lawrence for a statement on the typical behavior of 20th-century Englishmen...
...Kahler admits...
...What he has not done is to give us a carefully defined, systematic analysis of the condition of the individual in present-day society...
...To this extent, it resists the confining mold of rigorous social analysis...
...Kahler is first of all a student of literature, and it is natural that he should draw his evidence primarily from literary sources...
...It is the absence of rigorous definitions and analysis which makes this work unsatisfying as a diagnosis of our social ills and a prescription for their alleviation...
...It is also the product of an idiosyncratic vision and a personal talent...
...To this extent also, we can never be sure that the work of art provides a reliable picture of what is actually going on...
...Certainly no one goes to Kinsey for an epitome of love or sex...
...He gathers evidence also from the other arts—with the striking omission of music—and from the realms of philosophy and politics...
...He has focused our attention once again on a number of difficult issues in contemporary society which we dare not disregard...
...Now the use of literary sources to prove an argument in history or social psychology is a difficult and sometimes ticklish business...
...Although the culture of a period doubtless reflects contemporaneous social trends, any particular masterpiece is inevitably more than merely a mirror of historic forces...
...If the crisis of our time has really been brought on by the application of scientific method to the analysis of physical and social problems, then Mr...
...Our dilemma may be deeper, in other words, than even Mr...
...The gravity of the issues which Mr...
...The Kinsey Reports are a case in point...
...Let me raise one final objection...
...But then the question arises whether he has dealt with his theme in the best way possible...
...This is a curious book, at once convincing and unsatisfying...
...For one thing, there is danger of doing violence to the work of art itself...
...The individual can be salvaged only if collectivity is replaced by community, if the functional, impersonal, dehumanizing institutions of modern life give way to institutions based on warm, interpersonal, humanizing relationships...
...and a disintegration "from within"—revealed in an unwholesome preoccupation with the analysis of personal experience, which culminates in a virtual disruption of the human personality...
...Kahler too strongly for what he has not done...
...In the works of Baudelaire, Camus, Hofmannsthal, Kafka, Mallarme, Pound, Rilke and many other figures drawn from an impressive range of Western literature he finds the main proof of the transformation he is attempting to analyze...
...Professor Kahler finds that the impact of these forces has resulted in a two-sided disintegration of the individual...
...Kahler's proposed solution is patently inadequate...
...To systematic research he counterposes "human wisdom...
...Kahler is too conscientious a critic to fall into this trap...
...It takes up one of the momentous issues of contemporary history: the fate of the individual in a society dominated by technology, mass movements, and impersonal large-scale organizations...
...To indict science for the evils of our world is always tempting...
...This antithesis, I think, is false, and here lies a major weakness in Mr...
...It would be unfair to criticize Mr...
...they are criticized as an "attempt to pin down in abstract facts and figures the most delicate, the most personal, the most inexpressibly subtle relationship between human beings...
...Kahler does not approve of what he calls "systematic research," which he describes also as "scientification...
...But what he has done is also important...
Vol. 41 • April 1958 • No. 16
