This file is a single-author methodological essay, reprinted from Scientism and Values. Rothbard’s scope is the philosophy of the human sciences: economics, psychology, ethics, political theory, and social inquiry generally. Its central thesis is that modern “scientism” falsely claims the prestige of science while importing physical-science methods into domains defined by consciousness, choice, and purpose.
Scientism is the profoundly unscientific attempt to transfer uncritically the methodology of the physical sciences to the study of human action.
Rothbard begins by refusing the common equation of anti-scientism with anti-science. True science means correct knowledge of things according to their nature; therefore method must follow the object studied. Physical entities act according to determined natures, but human beings act through consciousness and choice. The first conceptual move is thus anthropological and epistemological: any science of man must begin from volition.
Only human beings possess free will and consciousness: for they are conscious, and they can, and indeed must, choose their course of action.
From this premise Rothbard distinguishes praxeology, psychology, technology, and ethics. Praxeology studies the formal structure of means and ends; psychology studies why particular ends are chosen; technology studies means to given ends; ethics evaluates the ends themselves. If human purposiveness is denied, these disciplines collapse.
If men are like stones, if they are not purposive beings and do not strive for ends, then there is no economics, no psychology, no ethics, no technology, no science of man whatever.
The essay’s first major section defends free will against determinism. Rothbard argues that determinism in human affairs relies on an illicit analogy with physics and becomes self-refuting when asserted as a doctrine: the determinist tries to persuade others while denying the free rational judgment persuasion presupposes. He also rejects social determinism, insisting that “society” cannot originate ideas apart from individual minds. Historical explanation may trace influences, but it must stop before the irreducible fact of choice.
The middle sections expose two families of scientistic analogy. Mechanical analogies reduce man to machine, engineering material, measurable magnitude, or mathematical variable. Rothbard criticizes “social engineering,” model-building, econometrics, calculus, equilibrium, and “friction” when these are treated as literal methods rather than misleading metaphors. Organismic analogies, by contrast, inflate collectives into living wholes and reduce persons to cells.
The key to scientism is its denial of the existence of individual consciousness and will.
This critique leads directly to methodological individualism. Rothbard treats “society,” “the public,” “the nation,” and “the market” as labels for relations among acting persons, not entities with minds or purposes. His example of the market condenses the point: complaints against an “impersonal” market obscure the actual choices of buyers and sellers.
The “market” is individuals acting.
Against positivist induction and experimentalism in social science, Rothbard defends an axiomatic-deductive method derived from Misesian praxeology. Since action is already known from within—as purposive conduct by conscious agents—the human sciences do not begin like physics, by searching externally for causal laws through controlled experiments. Free will prevents constants and controlled repetition; therefore economic laws are qualitative rather than quantitative.
The proper theoretical methodology in human affairs, then, is the axiomatic-deductive method.
The essay then turns to values. Rothbard criticizes Weberian Wertfreiheit as commonly practiced: social scientists claim neutrality while adopting majority values or policy ends as if these required no ethical defense. Advising a bureau, central bank, tax system, or redistributive program is not value-free technical assistance; it implicitly endorses the end being served. He attacks this borrowed “objectivity” as moral evasion.
Scientific objectivity no longer means a man’s pursuit of truth wherever it may lead, but abiding by a Gallup poll of other, less informed subjectivities.
Rothbard’s concluding contrast is stark: a genuine science of man begins with individual consciousness, while scientism submerges the individual beneath collectives and borrowed physical models. The essay’s relevance lies in its systematic linkage of epistemology, economic method, and political theory. Its defense of praxeology is also a defense of individualism against the conceptual habits that make collectivism appear scientific.
The true science of man bases itself upon the existence of individual human beings, upon individual life and consciousness.
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