The Philosophy of the Business Man

Man has developed three types of explanation of phenomena. The oldest is deistic or theological. From earliest times man has explained happenings and situations by looking to outside powers, at first to many gods and later to one all-powerful deity. We still say, “God wills it,” “Thy will be done,” and “the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.” But, not later than the flowering of the Greek mind, a second type arose, namely, the metaphysical or philosophical. According to this type of explanation, there are great forces at work, such as the pursuit of liberty, economic determinism, and the unconscious urge of the reproduction of our kind. Such explanations or solutions are easy, economical, and satisfying to their devotees. They tend to reflect the working of the mind, however, rather than mirror the world that is. Reacting from the subjective, modern scholars have insisted upon a more objective approach. Impatient with deduction, they have proclaimed induction as the more fruitful method of discovering and dealing with phenomena, The result is positivism or science. For over a hundred years, workers have been allured by the new prospects, and in the group have been both Comte and Pareto: let us discover facts and classify them and avoid all metaphysical dogma.