ABSTRACT
Rationalist techniques almost always fail to solve human problems and unintentionally produce highly dysphoric, dystopian consequences because their implicit assumptions about human beings are wrong. Most commonly they assume, either explicitly or implicitly, that human beings are a clean slate, a tabula rasa, upon which the technicist may write whatever theme he has the power to try. The crucial mistake of the rationalist, the crux of the myth of rationalism and scientism, in their failure to see the fundamental distinction between problem solving that is tom from concrete situations, which is what is known as technicism, and problem solving grounded in concrete situations, which is known as practical wisdom. There are two very general perspectives on the relations between individuals and society which have dominated Western social thought since ancient Greece. One perspective is that of human nature guidance. The second major perspective has been that of social (cultural) or institutional determinism.
