Page "Friedrich Hayek" Paragraph 63

In his philosophy of science, which has much in common with that of his good friend Karl Popper, Hayek was highly critical of what he termed scientism: a false understanding of the methods of science that has been mistakenly forced upon the social sciences, but that is contrary to the practices of genuine science.

Usually, scientism involves combining the philosophers ' ancient demand for demonstrative justification with the associationists ' false view that all scientific explanations are simple two-variable linear relationships.

Hayek points out that much of science involves the explanation of complex multivariable and nonlinear phenomena, and the social science of economics and undesigned order compares favourably with such complex sciences as Darwinian biology.

These ideas were developed in The Counter-Revolution of Science: Studies in the Abuse of Reason, 1952 and in some of Hayek's later essays in the philosophy of science such as " Degrees of Explanation " and " The Theory of Complex Phenomena ".