March of Science and Erosion of Human Values

Scientific advancement:

Life today is very fast, and human beings are continuously running around to get hold of something that they really don’t know. Everyone is in a hurry to achieve something or the other. Every person is busy competing with the others and win over the world. But when we actually ask the person the ultimate goal they are proceeding towards, majority get stuck up with the response. It is because they actually don’t know what they are marching for.

The need of the era is to live happily and make others around us happy. Happiness is all that we all want. But the definition of happiness differs for everyone. A simple living of a poor man can yield much satisfaction and happiness than the life of a rich. The more the wealth, the stress factor increases, the health deteriorates, inefficiency comes in and we end up in irritation and frustrations. Hence, we have lost our ultimate goal of blissful life despite winning the entire world. A person working day and night to give the best living standard for the family loses the small lovely moments with the family members and children, and the day when he gets time for the family, the next generation gets ready to rush ahead with the work load. The life is very much sophisticated, but we lack the satisfaction in our lives.

Human values:

Human values of emotion, respect, mercy, simplicity etc. is a special feature for human beings only. They have been given the sixth sense to understand and develop themselves and the surroundings to make the world a nice place to live in. The human values have a rich source of intellect to analyse and justify their deeds. But with every new advancement in the technology, we have drowned ourselves to the extent that we hardly get time to think of these values. Man has become much selfish which has made him cunning and brutal. All we want today is our success at any cost. The cost may be the love, life and happiness of other person, but we don’t care to respect other’s emotions or feelings that come between our success path.

The German sociologist Max Weber

Max Weber

The German sociologist Max Weber recommended an interpretation of social action that differentiated between four different idealized types of rationality. The first, which he called Zweckrational or purposive/instrumental rationality, is connected to the beliefs about the behavior of other human beings or objects in the environment. 

The second type, Weber called Wertrational or value/belief-oriented. Here the action is taken on for what one might call reasons built-in to the actor: some ethical, aesthetic, religious or other motive, independent of whether it will lead to success. 

The third type was affectual, decided by an actor's specific affect, feeling, or emotion – to which Weber himself said that this was a kind of prudence that was on the borderline of what he believed "meaningfully oriented." 

The fourth was customary or conservative, determined by ingrained habituation. Weber stressed that it was very odd to find only one of these orientations: combinations were the standard. His practice also makes clear that he considered the first two as more important than the others, and it is debatable that the third and fourth are subtypes of the first two.

Psychology of Reasoning

In the psychology of reasoning, psychologists and cognitive scientists have guarded different positions on human rationality.

Richard Brandt

Richard Brandt suggested a 'reforming definition' of rationality, arguing someone is rational if their ideas survive a form of cognitive-psychotherapy.

Silvio Vietta

The German cultural historian Silvio Vietta has revealed that rationality as a quantitative mode of scientific thought was an invention of Greek philosophy, generally of the Pythagorean School.