The Critical Rationalist                       Vol. 03  No. 01
ISSN: 1393-3809                                    17-Apr-1998

References

3 The Application of Scientific Theories

4 Conclusion

(45) In these comments I have been concerned not so much to attack Percival's thesis about the possibility of indefinite technological growth as to question the soundness of his argument. This may seem like a thoroughly perverse activity for a criticial rationalist to engage it, since it is one of our principal claims--or anyway, one of mine--that what matters is the truth of an investigator's conclusion, rather than any argument purporting to lead to it. That is indeed so. But Percival himself stresses (§§23-28) the distinction between explaining a state of affairs and justifying the claim that it will be realized, and makes explicit that he is not attempting to provide any kind of justification of the generalization that `resources and resource-augmenting inventions do not simply dry up' (§26). His goal is only to show that the continued emergence of new inventions, and of new applications of old inventions, which might appear almost miraculous from a crassly materialist point of view, is explicable. I have tried to say why I think that his explanation is defective, but not by denying the thesis at which it is directed. It is not clear to me how one could attack such a thesis, which states merely a possibility, head on.

(46) In conclusion it would be disingenuous not to acknowledge that, lurking behind the optimistic assertion that interminable economic growth is possible, there is sometimes a decidedly callous doctrine concerning the current availability for exploitation of the material resources to which we have immediate access. Percival says nothing at all about this, and I ascribe to him nothing. But some thinkers will be ready to maintain that, our ingenuity being as untrammelled as it is, we should not be afraid of consuming as vigorously as we like any resources that we can get our hands on. We need not fear the exhaustion of oil supplies, some will say, for as oil becomes scarcer, intellectual investment in the creation of alternative fuels, and of alternative means of transport, will more than compensate for its unavailability. Percival cites some claims by Simon (1981) to the effect that price data show that some minerals have actually become less in demand in the past two centuries, though presumably they have not in any objective sense become less scarce. (Changes of taste, rather than availability of substitutes, may be responsible for some of these falls in price.) To this line of thinking it suffices to say that the guiding principle of liberal social action is that, even if large-scale, it should be piecemeal and, if not reversible--for no innovation is reversible--at least controllable. Social engineering that plans to pay off its mortgage with indefinite future wealth, neither earned nor even properly invested for, fits ill into this liberal picture.

References

3 The Application of Scientific Theories

The Critical Rationalist                       Vol. 03  No. 01
ISSN: 1393-3809                                    17-Apr-1998

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