"THE AGE PREFERRED THE REIGN OF INTELLECT TO THE REIGN OF LIBERTY"

HAYEK, Friedrich A. The Counter-Revolution of Science: Studies on the Abuse of Reason. Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press, (1952). Octavo, original tan cloth, original dust jacket. $1350.

First edition of Nobel laureate Hayek's critique of "scientism," written at the same time as The Road to Serfdom, his important defense of the free market.

Friedrich Hayek, who was awarded the 1974 Nobel Prize in Economics with Gunnar Myrdal, here analyzes how scientism, "the slavish imitation of the method and language of Science," is at the root of totalitarianism. Comprised of articles previously published in Economica (1941-44) and Measure (1951), The Counter-Revolution of Science is divided into two parts. "The first part is an acute and abstract study of the essential differences in method required in the study of the physical sciences on the one hand and the social sciences on the other… The second part of the book… gives an amusing and enlightening account of the… origin of 'scientism' [in the 19th century]" (Hazlitt, 83). This work complements Hayek's classic defense of the free market, The Road to Serfdom (1948). Owner ink signature. A few pencil annotations to first few leaves of text.

Book with faint foxing to endpapers, otherwise fine; very good dust jacket with one short closed tear to spine head, one long closed tear along read flap fold, rubbing to extremities.