SOURCE: A review of The Counter-Revolution of Science: Studies on the Abuse of Reason, in The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. XLIX, No. 17, August 14, 1952, pp. 560-65.

In the following review of Hayek's Counter-Revolution of Science, Nagel disagrees with Hayek's contention that the importation of the methods of natural science into the study of human interaction is wrong-headed and doomed to produce unworkable political programs.

In this interesting book—its contents first appeared as separate articles, chiefly in Economica—Professor Hayek constructs a methodological underpinning for the critique of current social theory and economic policy he published earlier, particularly in his The Road to Serfdom. The first of its three parts seeks to establish certain fundamental differences between the methods of the natural and social sciences. It argues that “scientism”—the assumption that the methods of the former disciplines are identical with those of the latter—is an abuse of...