I want to talk about the concept of the "disenchantment of the world." This idea was introduced in the early 20th century by the German sociologist and philosopher Max Weber.
Weber first presented this concept in a lecture he gave in 1917 at Munich University in Germany. That speech was later published two years later, in 1919, as an essay. Interestingly, the lecture's original title wasn't "The Disenchantment of the World"; it was called "The Vocation of Science." I want to discuss this article because it's a crucial entry point into understanding Weber's concept and how he connects the disenchantment of the world, linked with scientific rationality, to the emergence of modernity.
The Alienation of Academia
Weber begins his lecture by discussing the vocation of the scientist—the person who dedicates their life to scientific research. He takes a very concrete, materialistic approach, comparing the formation, education, and career paths of scientists in the U.S. versus Germany. He examines how their institutional backgrounds shape their self-perception and identity.
Weber argues that by the 20th century, as universities became increasingly professionalized and disciplines more segregated into separate departments, a sense of rising alienation emerged among academics. This alienation stems from universities becoming more like businesses rather than academies for cultivating the human spirit. For example, a department in a U.S. university or an academic institute in a German university increasingly needs more money for its projects. This means they become less responsive to the needs of their workers (professors) or the demands of intellectual rigor and honesty.
He analyzes the training of graduate students and the workings of the academic market in the early 20th century (specifically 1917). Weber concludes that despite significant differences, academic systems in Europe and North America share this growing sense of alienation.
Plutocracy vs. Bureaucracy in Academia
Weber highlights a major difference between the German and American intellectual communities, particularly in universities. He claims that German academia operates on fundamentally plutocratic principles. To become an academic professor in Germany, individuals often work for relatively little money, meaning this career path is primarily accessible to those wealthy enough to support themselves for several years while doing research without job security.
He contrasts this plutocratic structure in Germany with a bureaucratic approach in the U.S. While American academia might be more democratic and offer more funding, it presents numerous bureaucratic obstacles. These hurdles ultimately contribute to the same sense of alienation between individuals and the institutions they work for.
The Dual Role of the Scientist: Research and Teaching
Weber is most interested in the identity individuals develop through these institutional trajectories. He observes that once scientists are in the profession—having earned their PhDs and secured jobs—they are evaluated by two distinct sets of criteria. This applies to those in natural sciences (biologists, physicists, chemists) as well as social sciences (historians, sociologists, political scientists).
First, scientists are assessed on their research capacity—whether they produce interesting, innovative, and original work that contributes to ongoing scholarly conversations. Second, they are evaluated on their function as teachers.
The problem, according to Weber, is that these two callings—researcher and teacher—are not the same. Teachers often succeed based on what he calls the "cult of personality." Students are frequently drawn to charismatic teachers whose appeal may have little to do with the material they're teaching. Consequently, individuals who excel as teachers don't always succeed as researchers, and vice versa. An original thinker and great writer might still receive poor teaching evaluations for not being charismatic enough or not meeting student demands.
Weber's essay, "The Vocation of Science," has a subtext concerning the danger of choosing mentors or leaders in the university context solely based on this cult of personality, as it can produce demagogues. This underlying concern shapes his analysis.
Passion, Inspiration, and Progress
So, what's the issue with this cult of personality and the split between research and teaching identities? Weber notes that while current institutional realities pressure academics to develop a cult of personality, personality alone cannot guarantee success in the sciences. For someone to be a globally successful scientist, encompassing both research and teaching, two other fundamental things are needed: passion and inspiration.
A scientist needs passion for their research subject to remain motivated, even when chipping away at a very niche topic that few people care about. Many scientists relate to this: a deep fascination or obsession keeps them in the profession. As one professor told him, "If you're in academia for the fame and fortune, you went into the wrong field of work."
The second crucial element is inspiration. To be part of the scientific community, a scientist must contribute something new to our collective understanding of a phenomenon. Someone passionate about science but who doesn't discover or innovate might be a science teacher but not necessarily a scientist. A scientist needs to be productive, meaning they need to be inspired.
Weber argues that these two concepts—passion and inspiration—bring the scientist much closer to the figure of the artist than we might imagine. Artists also succeed based on passion and inspiration, becoming obsessed with an idea, pursuing it, and receiving some form of inspiration to produce new and original work that shakes up the art world. Thus, scientists and artists are more alike than we realize.
Science, Art, and the Concept of Progress
Where scientists and artists differ, according to Weber, is in their relationship to the concept of progress. In science, advancement happens through incremental growth, where knowledge builds upon itself in a rational and coherent way. This isn't the case in the art world. It would be odd to claim that neo-impressionism is "more true" than impressionism. Truth and progress don't seem like the right categories for understanding the evolution of art.
However, in science, the concept of progress is essential. Scientists must be able to say that what comes later is, on rational grounds, better than what came before. Therefore, a scientist must be committed to a concept of progress that an artist does not need in their line of work.
The Existential Crisis of Science and the Disenchantment of the World
This is where the essay takes a slightly existential turn. Weber astutely points out that once you introduce the notion of infinite progress—the idea that knowledge can always improve and that science will never come to an end—it prompts an existential crisis for those who dedicate their lives to the pursuit of knowledge.
It puts the scientist in a dilemma: you must be passionate about something that will eventually become obsolete. There's a sense of futility attached to the scientist, as they know that even their greatest discovery will likely not endure for a thousand years. This raises the question: why does anyone do science when they know its inherent obsolescence?
This is where Weber shifts from discussing the vocation of the individual scientist to the vocation of science as a social practice.
It's in the second half of the lecture that Weber returns to the vocation of science writ large and introduces his famous concept of the disenchantment of the world (German: Entzauberung). This term can also be translated as "demagification" or the "taking away of magic." The German root refers to the breaking of an enchantment or spell. In short, it means that by the early 20th century, following the Industrial Revolution, science had become so successful at explaining almost everything about the world that the world had lost its spark.
The Unknown vs. The Unknowable
One way to understand this loss of spark is by considering the difference between what is unknown and what is unknowable from an individual's perspective. For instance, I may not know the temperature of the sun, the size of an average bacterium, or how many polar bears remain. However, this knowledge isn't inaccessible or unknowable. Thanks to the success of science, all I need to do is research it or, in today's context, "Google it." The answer is "out there."
This is Weber's view of the modern world: it has become disenchanted because there's no longer a sense of mystery. Every conceivable question about nature seemingly has a scientific answer.
Science's Tools: Concepts and Experiments
Science achieved this high level of explanatory power, according to Weber, by combining two crucial innovations:
- Concepts: Science succeeds by introducing new concepts and rigorously testing them. Weber credits the ancient Greeks for their emphasis on creating new concepts, making it a foundational tool for science in mastering nature.
- Experiments: Science also masters nature through experiments. This innovation, he argues, emerged during the Renaissance, on the eve of the Scientific Revolution. During this period, experience became the ultimate ground for justifying claims. If you made a claim, you had to show how you arrived at it through experience, which increasingly meant controlled experience, as provided by experiments.
For a long time, starting in the 17th century with the rise of modern science, people understood the immense value of this scientific combination of concepts and experiments for human life. From the Renaissance through the 18th and 19th centuries, there was a commitment to the idea that science added meaning and value to human existence.
Losing Faith in Science
However, Weber contends that we no longer believe this. He explains the emergence of the disenchantment of the world in generational terms. Older generations, he says, believed in the value and mission of science, seeing it as meaningful. But young people nowadays don't. As a result, people engage with science simply as a practical activity that serves instrumental ends, allowing them to dominate nature without providing any spiritual enhancement to our experience of reality.
If you ask the average person in the 20th century what science is good for, they'll likely say it provides technology, cures for diseases, buildings, and engineering. It's all instrumental, all about means-ends rationality. Weber believes we've lost that older sense, prevalent during the Renaissance and even with Protestantism, that science injects spiritual value into human lives.
Re-Enchanting Ourselves with Science
One of the most interesting things about reading this lecture is that while Weber clearly sees the disenchantment of the world as something science brought about through its success (taking the mystery out of nature and leading to practical rationality as its sole identity), he also believes it's something we have produced by not understanding the true meaning or vocation of science.
This surprised me, as I'd always thought Weber attributed the disenchantment solely to scientific rationality. But in fact, he says the problem isn't that science disenchanted us, but that we have disenchanted ourselves with science—we no longer believe in it.
The final part of the lecture discusses the different kinds of value that Weber believes science provides to human existence. He identifies four:
- Technical prowess: This is the practical, means-ends rationality he already mentioned. Science provides technology, cures, engineering, and so on.
- A method of thinking: Science trains us in a fundamentally critical method of thinking. As a scientist, you question established tradition, asking if it's true based on concepts and experience.
- Clarity: If you hold certain values in your personal life (e.g., communism or republicanism), scientific thinking—that critical spirit—teaches you that accepting those values logically entails accepting the means necessary to achieve them. This ability to reflect on the relationship between values and necessary means provides clarity to your worldview and priorities. It allows you to reorganize your thinking: if you don't want to accept certain means, you must re-evaluate whether you truly accept the associated goal.
- Meaning of a practical stance: Science helps you understand the meaning of a practical stance from a particular ideological position. Once you know your ideology (in a broad sense), scientific thinking can help you figure out the practical meaning of your stance. For example, if you identify as a revolutionary, the meaning of that stance will differ depending on whether you have conservative or left-leaning political values, even if the stance itself is the same. Weber explains this point as forcing individuals to confront themselves and account for who they are, what they value, and what their practical stances mean in light of their entire constellation of values.
So, while science will never give you your values directly, it provides a way of thinking about and deliberating on those values.
Conclusion
To conclude, Weber suggests that science might have disenchanted nature, but it can still perform what he calls "ethical work." It can help us with critical thinking, clarity, and reflecting on values, even if it can't directly provide those values (which must come from elsewhere). The disenchantment of the world, for Weber, is both a product of science's success and something science can help us overcome, provided we move away from the cynical interpretation of science that has developed over the last 150 years.
David M. Peña-Guzmán
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