The scientific vocation in a disenchanted world

Max Weber's "Science as a Vocation".

As I’ve mentioned before, I occasionally write reviews of books or other pieces of media over at The Leaky Margin. For the most part, I don’t publish those reviews here. But in some cases, when they concern topics that are relevant to the kinds of topics I write about on the Counterfactual, I do.

---

I have an ongoing interest in disenchantment: the notion that many aspects of society have undergone a gradual stripping away of belief in the world of magic, spirits, and other entities that lived alongside us and sometimes intervened in our affairs. I was first introduced to this idea in Meghan O’Gieblyn’s excellent God, Human, Animal, Machine, which launched me on a path to learn more about how we (humans) understand ourselves in relation to the universe around us and to the realm of possibility. I am interested, broadly, in how disenchantment came about, whether it is as far-reaching or definitive as sometimes claimed (some disagree), and whether contemporary technologies like Artificial Intelligence represent a potential “re-enchantment” or are simply another step towards the logic of mechanization.

All that, though, is secondary to the purpose of this post. Although I first encountered disenchantment in God, Human, Animal, Machine, the idea is typically associated with the sociologist Max Weber. Weber is known for many things, such as his essay on The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, and more generally, for playing a pivotal role in the development of sociological theory. As far as I know, he first discussed disenchantment in a 1917 lecture entitled “Science as a Vocation”.

I wanted to understand the concept at its “source”, so to speak, so about two years ago, I read (or attempted to read) Science as a Vocation. I struggled to get through it, even though it is very short. Earlier this year, I revisited it, and for whatever reason, reading it felt much more fluid—perhaps because I had already familiarized myself with more of the underlying ideas. Then, just the other week, I picked it up again one evening and found myself marveling at the clarity and concision of his prose and the breadth of his ideas.

Weber’s lecture discusses disenchantment, but its theme is really about what it takes to have and to follow a vocation for science, particularly against the backdrop of changes like the bureaucratization of the university and the disenchantment of society. It is striking to me how so many of the issues that Weber describes in 1917—more than a century ago—are relevant today. In the spirit of a leaky margin, I wanted to use this space to jot down some of what stuck out on this reread.

Weber begins by “pedantically” (his own words) enumerating the details of university life: the conditions under which science is conducted and scientific knowledge is produced. As a work of sociology, this section is both illuminating and—as I wrote above—remarkable in how well it matches my understanding of the current conditions of academic science.

First, he argues that while Germany and America have thus far maintained distinct institutional structures, the Germany university system was at that time (1917) “moving in the same direction as in America”:

The major institutes of science and medicine are “state-capitalist” enterprises. They cannot be administered without funding on a huge scale. So we see the situation that exists wherever capitalist operations are to be found, namely the “separation of the worker from the means of production”. The worker, in this instance the assistant, is dependent on the resources that are provided by the state. (pg. 3)

Weber believes that this industrialization of university life will eventually spread to even his own discipline, “where the artisan is still the owner of his own resources” (pg. 4), and that while the “technical advantages” of this paradigm cannot be doubted, it does bring with it a fundamentally different “spirit”:

Both in essence and appearance, the old constitution of the university has become a fiction. (Pg. 4)

My understanding of what Weber is saying here is that the university (and the scientific process) has undergone many of the same changes that other aspects of society underwent with “changes to scale”. At a certain size, an institution must become a kind of bureaucratic machine. This machine may function efficiently, but a consequence of this mechanization is that it turns individuals into “parts” of the system and alienates them from their labor—in much the same way that an artisan craftsman was displaced by the assembly line.

One of the only features that has survived these changes (in Weber’s view) is the element of chance in determining success in a scientific career. This element of chance manifests itself partly in the conflation of duties that accompanies professorial life: a professor must not only produce scientific knowledge (research) but also teach, ideally large bodies of students. As Weber points out (and as any university student could report) the abilities to conduct research well and to teach well do not necessarily correlate:

Every young man who feels he has a vocation as a scholar must be aware that the task awaiting him has a dual aspect. He must be properly qualified not only as a scholar, but also as a teacher. And these two things are by no means identical. A man can be both an outstanding scholar and an execrable teacher. (pg. 5-6).

Here, Weber also argues that the metrics for evaluating teaching quality at the time (e.g., the number of students attending a lecture) are quite obviously not an indication of how effectively an instructor is teaching those students:

But the question of whether an academic is a good teacher or a bad one is answered with reference to the frequency with which students honor him with their presence.¹ However, it is also true that the fact that students flock to a teacher is determined largely by purely extraneous factors such as his personality or even his tone of voice—to a degree that might scarcely be thought possible. (pg. 6)

A further element of arbitrariness enters into the nature of success:

Do you believe that you can bear to see one mediocrity after another being promoted over your head year after year, without your becoming embittered and warped? Needless to say, you always receive the same answer: of course, I live only for my “vocation”—but I, at least, have found only a handful of people who have survived this process without injury to their personality. (pg. 7)

Weber doesn’t discuss these issues in a tone of complaint. He is dispassionate and descriptive, and his point is that the conditions of university life and a scientific career are, in many ways, not as externally rewarding as one might assume.² Scientists, then, must harbor an inner vocation for science that allows them to weather these conditions and avoid resentments.

Weber then turns to the nature of scientific work itself.

In his view, a vocation for science requires a capacity and passion for intellectual specialization. Again, I think he’s largely right. While cross-field collaboration is exciting and sometimes even helpful, making a scientific contribution demands an ability to narrow one’s focus to a particular research question:³

And anyone who lacks the ability to don blinkers for once and to convince himself that the destiny of his soul depends upon whether he is right to make precisely this conjecture and no other at this point in his manuscript should keep well away from science. He will never be able to submit to what we may call the “experience” of science. In the absence of this strange intoxication that outsiders greet with a pitying smile, without this passion, this conviction that “millennia had to pass before your were born, and millennia more must wait in silence” to see if your conjecture will be confirmed—without this you do not possess this vocation for science and should turn your hand to something else. For nothing has any value for a human being as a human being unless he can pursue it with passion. (pg. 8)

Perhaps cast in stronger terms than I’d put it, but fundamentally, I agree that good science depends in part on the ability to focus with almost obsessive detail on exactly which claim can be made from exactly which pieces of evidence.

Passion, though, is not enough. Science also relies on inspiration. Here, Weber argues that while the notion of reducing science to a series of rote actions, much as in a factory, has become fashionable, it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny: for one, in both laboratories and factories, it is “necessary for something, and the right thing at that, to occur to people if they are to achieve anything worthwhile” (pg. 8).⁴ This “occurring of the right thing” is, essentially, inspiration. The problem is that inspiration cannot be summoned on demand: the best ideas might occur to us while smoking a cigar on the sofa or going for an evening walk, and even then, we cannot engage in those activities with any certainty that inspiration will strike.

Moreover, a necessary precondition for inspiration is hard work:

At any rate, ideas come when they are least expected, rather than while you are racking your brains at your desk. But by the same token, they would not have made their appearance if we had not spent many hours pondering at our desks or brooding passionately over the problems facing us. (pg. 9)

This section is, in my view, one of Weber’s strongest insights, and it reflects my own experience of scientific practice.

In order for me to make real progress on something, I have to care about it. “Caring about it” manifests in different ways, but one such way is obsession: I ruminate on ideas, turning them over and over again in my mind and inspecting them from various angles. Sometimes this work involves reading or analyzing data, but much of it is intangible and occurs entirely in my head at various hours of the day or night. It is also, for the most part, lacking in inspiration; but when inspiration does strike, it only does so when I have laid the appropriate foundation.

Science involves progress. Even if one rejects a strictly teleological view of the history of science, it is not particularly controversial to assert that successive generations of scientists often (though not always) construct “better” (more accurate, more useful, more parsimonious) models of the phenomena they are engaged in trying to explain. A corollary of this is that success, in some sense, requires a kind of obsolescence (bolding mine):

Contrast that⁵ with the realm of science, where we all know that what we have achieved will be obsolete in ten, twenty, or fifty years. That is the fate, indeed, that is the very meaning of scientific work…Every scientific “fulfillment” gives birth to new “questions” and cries out to be surpassed and rendered obsolete. Everyone who wishes to serve science has to resign himself to this. The products of science can undoubtedly remain important for a long time, as “objects of pleasure” because of their artistic qualities, or as a means of training others in scientific work. But we must repeat: to be superseded scientifically is not simply our fate but our goal. We cannot work without living in hope that others will advance beyond us. In principle, this progress is infinite. (pg. 11)

In science, then, one’s “legacy” is in having contributed some number of steps to the onward march of a particular theoretical paradigm. Not only that, but we cannot assume that we (broadly construed) will ever “arrive” at some “destination”; there are only new questions to be asked.

There is something noble in how this all sounds, but it is also at odds with a certain desire to be remembered as more than a link on an infinite chain. What, Weber asks, is the point of doing something that cannot be finished?

One solution is pragmatic: if our research enables some kind of technical achievement (say, building a faster train), we can take solace in having had some practical benefit; but most science does not have a direct application, and many scientists, if pressed—or even if not—would admit that something other than practical application drives their interest in their work.

This is where Weber turns at last to disenchantment.⁶ According to Weber, a crucial effect of scientific progress over the last few centuries is that an increasing number of people operate according to the assumption that the world is in some sense fundamentally comprehensible. We do not assume that we understand everything, or even that for every possible phenomenon there is someone that already understands it, but rather, we have a faith—my word, not Weber’s—that everything could be understood:

It is the knowledge or the conviction that if only we wished to understand them we could do so at any time. It means that in principle, then, we are not ruled by mysterious, unpredictable forces, but that, on the contrary, we can in principle control everything by means of calculation. That in turn means the disenchantment of the world. (pg. 12-13)

Leaning on Tolstoy’s Confession, Weber continues by suggesting that disenchantment robs even death of intrinsic meaning. In an enchanted world, our life represents part of some grander “cosmic tale”, and there is some sense in which our death represents a kind of “arrival” at a destination (the exact nature of which depends on the particularities of the beliefs involved). In a disenchanted world, there is no point of arrival: consequently, we can become tired of life but cannot be fulfilled by it.

The same is true of scientific progress. In an enchanted (or even simply Christian) world, science was viewed as a path to understanding God’s intentions: nature was the “book” of God’s design, and science (especially naturalism) was the means by which we could read it. This is the paradigm that gave us quotations such as these:

“I bring you the proof of God’s providence in the anatomy of a louse.” (Jan Swammerdam, 1658).

In a secular, disenchanted world, there are no intentions to be read off the book of nature, so this cannot be the source of meaning derived from science:

Who imagines nowadays that a knowledge of astronomy or biology or physics or chemistry could teach us anything about the meaning of the world? (pg. 16)

Weber then considers the possibility that science could deliver answers to questions about the meaning of life and how to achieve happiness. Tolstoy dismissed this idea, as does Weber. Referencing Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Weber writes:

But after Nietzsche’s annihilating criticism of those “last men” “who have discovered happiness”, I can probably ignore this completely. After all, who believes it—apart from some overgrown children in their professorial chairs or editorial offices? (pg. 17)

Science, then, cannot tell us what to do or how to live. It cannot even answer the fundamental presuppositions that drive scientific investigation itself: physics and chemistry can give us knowledge about the laws governing the world, but they cannot tell us why it is worth knowing these things. Similarly, practical sciences like modern medicine presuppose that it is worth preserving lives and reducing suffering—a supposition that most of us would hopefully agree with, but which cannot itself be demonstrated scientifically. Underneath all realms of scientific investigation are assumptions about what is worth knowing or doing in the world—values, in other words—and these values are not themselves amenable to the scientific method.⁷

What, then, is the value of science and a scientific vocation?

One contribution is something like a set of epistemic techniques:

…science provides methods of thought, the tools of the trade, and the training needed to make use of them. (pg. 25)

Perhaps this seems prosaic, but I’m not so sure. It’s similar to what I’ve argued elsewhere about the possible value of applying insights from Cognitive Science to the study of Large Language Models (LLMs), which represent a kind of “moving target”: at minimum, Cognitive Science provides a set of theoretical tools and methods for thinking about how to approach a research question—even if the specific inferences or insights from a particular research study don’t generalize to future LLMs.

This points to the more substantive contribution of science, which is clarity about how different courses of action relate to the values we hold and wish to achieve—which, again, are not themselves determined by science. Weber writes:

If you take up this or that attitude, the lessons of science are that you must apply such and such means in order to convert your beliefs into a reality. These means may well turn out to be of a kind that you feel compelled to reject. You will then be forced to choose between the end and the inevitable means. Does the end “justify” these means or not? The teacher can demonstrate to you the necessity of this choice. As long as he wishes to remain a teacher, and not turn into a demagogue, he can do no more. Of course, he can say to you that if you wish to achieve this or that end, you will have to put up with certain accompanying consequences that experience tells us are bound to make their appearance…To put it metaphorically, if you choose this particular standpoint, you will be serving this particular god and will give offense to every other god. (pg. 26)

Science can help demonstrate which conclusions follow from which premises, and thus what the likely consequences will be of adopting various attitudes or enacting various behaviors. This has practical relevance, of course, but also moral relevance: if we wish to uphold certain values, it is helpful to know how taking certain positions or doing certain things relates to those values. The scientific process cannot answer these questions definitively—and it certainly cannot tell us what those values should be in the first place—but it can often provide additional clarity, even if that clarity amounts, in the end, to more uncertainty than we started out with.

This portrait of the scientific enterprise resonates deeply with me. Clarity is not everything, but it is not nothing. It is what I hope to achieve through my research and my writing. I do not imagine that I can firmly and unequivocally draw this or that conclusion, but I hope that I can at least articulate the conditions under which this or that conclusion might hold, describe how the existing pieces of evidence meet or don’t meet those conditions, and suggest how we might go about collecting evidence to gain further clarity. It is, perhaps, a less exalted view of a scientific vocation than is held by some, but I think that is both appropriate and much more sustainable. As Weber argues, science cannot tell us the meaning of life, and even its strongest supporters will be disappointed if scientists pretend otherwise and fail to deliver.

1. Interestingly, I suspect some would also argue that many contemporary research universities suffer from the inverse of what Weber describes: research is often felt to be incentivized more than quality teaching. Unfortunately, I do think this is true, though there are ongoing attempts to remedy this throughout higher education, such as the creation of tenure-track lines for teaching-focused professors. At the same time, Weber’s insight about class sizes still holds true, just in a slightly modified sense. For a number of reasons (many of them well-intentioned), instructors are encouraged to teach larger and larger classes, such that even the act of teaching itself has undergone the kind of industrialization Weber describes with respect to scientific research: instructors speak of “managing” or “administering” a class with large (though sometimes insufficiently so) “teaching teams” divided into various “roles”.

2. I think Weber is both right in an absolute sense and wrong in a relative sense, at least with respect to certain academic positions. The role of a tenured scientist is perhaps less artisanal than it used to be or than people imagine, but my understanding is that it still affords relatively more autonomy than most other “professionalized” fields and certainly than most occupations one could conceivably have in society. Of course, many researchers occupy more precious, non-tenured positions, where the “external conditions” of science do in some cases (not all) seem more challenging.

3. Paul Bloom makes a similar case in his recent essay.

4. Weber also makes the point that industrialists, too, depend on inspiration:

A businessman or a big industrialist without “commercial imagination”, that is to say, without inspiration or brilliant ideas will continue his whole life long to be someone who ought rather to be a clerk or a technical official.

In other words, academics—and artists, for that matter—would do well that they’re not the only ones who depend to some extent on the mystery of sudden insight.

5. Here, Weber is drawing a contrast with art, where (arguably) a “product” does not become obsolete in the same way as it might in a domain like science: we still marvel over ancient works of art and do not feel that more modern works have somehow “displaced” them.

6. The next few pages read as a kind of précis for later works such as Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, and serve as an excellent example of the kind of clarity and concision that Weber achieves in this lecture.

7. This is also why, Weber argues, there should be a distinction between the academic analysis of political institutions and party politics themselves, and why lecturers should be very careful not to proselytize from the podium:

And if he feels he has a vocation to intervene in the conflict of worldviews and party opinions, let him do so outside in the marketplace of life, in the press, at public meetings, in associations, or wherever he wishes. But it is all too easy for him to display the courage of his convictions in the presence of people who are condemned to silence even though they may well think differently from him. (pg. 25)

Further, as Weber points out later on, science can provide clarity about the actions that might help us achieve our values—but those values are not themselves derived from science.