Economics and Philosophy of Social Science: The Task and its Scope

Philosophy, science and society are all indispensable features of human life. Society cannot dispense with either philosophy or science; nor can science and philosophy dispense with each other. Without philosophy, science loses its social direction; without science, philosophy ceases to be socially relevant. The philosophy and the science which are alive are — like life itself — not only analysable but also indivisible. And like life itself, neither is entirely concrete nor entirely abstract; exclusively material or exclusively intellectual; totally practical or totally theoretical. Such rigid lines of demarcation are false: they have no counterparts in the realm of reality. Only that ‘usefulness’ can be opposed to truth which is no more than a lie; that is, one man’s usefulness at the expense of another. Otherwise, truth itself is useful, just as well as usefulness is true. Both a soulless technology and an immaterial piety have destroyed themselves in the past. They may do the same in the future.