ABSTRACT
This chapter shows two ways of looking at the pattern of human activities which lead to very different conclusions concerning both its explanation and the possibilities of deliberately altering it. The first view holds that human institutions will serve human purposes only if they have been deliberately designed for these purposes, often also that the fact that an institution exists is evidence of its having been created for a purpose. The other view, which has slowly and gradually advanced since antiquity but for a time was almost entirely overwhelmed by the more glamorous constructivist view, was that orderliness of society. The laws of overall evolution supposedly derived from observation have in fact nothing to do with the legitimate theory of evolution which accounts for the process. Evolutionary rationalism, recognizes abstractions as the indispensable means of the mind which enable it to deal with a reality it cannot fully comprehend.
