17
FACTS AND VALUES
Theory and practice
Science is meaningless because it gives no answer to our question, the only question important to us, “what shall we do and how shall we live?”1
I now intend to show that the human sciences are necessarily non-neutral; that they are intrinsically critical (both of beliefs and their objects) and self-critical; that accounts of social reality are not only value-impregnated but value-impregnating, not only practically-imbued but practically-imbuing; and that in particular they both causally motivate and logically entail evaluative and practical judgements ceteris paribus. I will not be so concerned with the way in which factual and theoretical judgements are predisposed by value and practical ...
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