little more than the intellectual endorsement of what has already come to pass. While some of the changes that the NCR lumps under the secular humanist label have been hastened by liberal moral entrepreneurs, most are the unintended consequences of modernity. When even those who are conservative on economic and foreign policy matters wish to retain the right to pursue their own lifestyles, the only circumstance under which the NCR could succeed is a return to cultural homogeneity. Nothing visible to the student of the empirical social world suggests that the internal cultural fragmentation of modern societies is about to be reversed. In his analysis of the present, the sociologist thus becomes a curious bedfellow of the Bob Jones University fundamentalist; the necessary precondition for the success of the NCR is a massive religious revival. Where I differ from Bob Jones III is that I see no reason to suppose such a revival likely.
Were the grievances of American fundamentalists the result of the actions of secular humanists, they could be removed by the power of fundamentalist numbers expressed through the ballot box. After all, conservative Protestants remain one of the largest cultural minorities in America, and America is, generally speaking, a democracy. But at least part of what bothers fundamentalists is the apparent
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tension between items of modern scientific and technical knowledge and parts of the conservative Protestant world view. To concentrate on evolution, it may well be that a modern industrial economy can permit the survival of prescientific ideas in certain limited spheres. The ability to make missiles, launch space rockets, exploit natural resources, and competitively produce cars may not be threatened by the belief that the world is less than a million years old and was made by God in six days. However, despite the willingness of Justices Rehnquist and Scalia to leave the matter of the origins of species to the vote of state legislatures, it seems clear that the tendency of modern societies to accord priority in debates about matters of scientific interest to those with good credentials represents some sort of functional imperative, something that could not change without posing a major threat to the knowledge base of the society. If that is the case, fundamentalists are not going to win their arguments with scientists and technologists, despite the occasional minor victory.
Something similar could be said of other areas that concern the NCR. While there has been increasing hostility to the power of the professions, it still remains the case that in all advanced industrial societies, professionally accredited occupational groups dominate particular spheres of activity. Even on matters such as education, or the civil rights of the unborn or the terminally ill, where technical considerations are obviously informed by moral judgments, the opinions of professionals carry far more weight than those of lay people, largely because it is in the very nature of the modern society to translate moral and ethical matters into technical considerations (Wilson 1982: 4252). The basic assumptions that inform modern industrial productionthat all complex objects and procedures can be reduced to repeatable acts and replaceable components; that nothing is more than the sum of its parts; that everything can be measured and calculated; that nothing is sacred and that everything can be improved; that increased efficiency is the main imperativecannot be confined to the world of work. The formal rationality which dominates that sphere gradually invades all other areas of social action. There is not the space here to present this argument in sufficient detail to convince the skeptical, but it is accepted by most
Page 64
sociologists (of varying ideological positions) that it is characteristic of the modern world to subordinate the moral to the technical and the lay to the professional.
My point is that the authority
Were the grievances of American fundamentalists the result of the actions of secular humanists, they could be removed by the power of fundamentalist numbers expressed through the ballot box. After all, conservative Protestants remain one of the largest cultural minorities in America, and America is, generally speaking, a democracy. But at least part of what bothers fundamentalists is the apparent
Page 63
tension between items of modern scientific and technical knowledge and parts of the conservative Protestant world view. To concentrate on evolution, it may well be that a modern industrial economy can permit the survival of prescientific ideas in certain limited spheres. The ability to make missiles, launch space rockets, exploit natural resources, and competitively produce cars may not be threatened by the belief that the world is less than a million years old and was made by God in six days. However, despite the willingness of Justices Rehnquist and Scalia to leave the matter of the origins of species to the vote of state legislatures, it seems clear that the tendency of modern societies to accord priority in debates about matters of scientific interest to those with good credentials represents some sort of functional imperative, something that could not change without posing a major threat to the knowledge base of the society. If that is the case, fundamentalists are not going to win their arguments with scientists and technologists, despite the occasional minor victory.
Something similar could be said of other areas that concern the NCR. While there has been increasing hostility to the power of the professions, it still remains the case that in all advanced industrial societies, professionally accredited occupational groups dominate particular spheres of activity. Even on matters such as education, or the civil rights of the unborn or the terminally ill, where technical considerations are obviously informed by moral judgments, the opinions of professionals carry far more weight than those of lay people, largely because it is in the very nature of the modern society to translate moral and ethical matters into technical considerations (Wilson 1982: 4252). The basic assumptions that inform modern industrial productionthat all complex objects and procedures can be reduced to repeatable acts and replaceable components; that nothing is more than the sum of its parts; that everything can be measured and calculated; that nothing is sacred and that everything can be improved; that increased efficiency is the main imperativecannot be confined to the world of work. The formal rationality which dominates that sphere gradually invades all other areas of social action. There is not the space here to present this argument in sufficient detail to convince the skeptical, but it is accepted by most
Page 64
sociologists (of varying ideological positions) that it is characteristic of the modern world to subordinate the moral to the technical and the lay to the professional.
My point is that the authority
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