Abstract:
Following World War II, the United States enjoyed unprecedented power and
prestige. The wartime alliance with the Soviet Union quickly collapsed amid mutual
suspicion and fear, however, resulting in the Cold War. Science was a significant
political component in that ideological conflict. In the United States, inspired by Franklin
D. Roosevelt's New Deal, many placed their confidence in the ability of science to
improve the human condition. By contrast, American conservatives viewed the New
Deal much more negatively; they were also ambivalent about the promise of modem
science. A few even saw a troubling acceptance of the superiority of science over other
forms of knowledge, a view they labeled as "scientism." Conservatives like Richard M.
Weaver, the economist Friedrich A. Hayek, and others attempted to criticize scientism,
but this critique did not take hold. Ultimately, conservatives were unable to enlist
scientists in their criticism of scientism; moreover, the overriding importance of
anticommunism to the postwar conservative resurgence blunted conservative
antiscientism. Conservative scientists, while dissenting from their left-liberal peers in the
realm of politics, nonetheless shared with those peers a strong belief in the positive values
of science. In addition, conservative scientists often emphasized the importance of
Western science to freedom, in contrast to communist science supposedly tainted by
ideology. As conservatives recognized the value of science to their own political goals,
the antiscientistic critique faded. This conservative view, hitherto neglected in the
historical literature, was and remains an important part of the interaction of science and
politics in America during the twentieth century.
