Veblens Instinct of Workmanship pg. 253-265

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Veblens Instinct of Workmanship pg. 253-265 


We continue this journey still in the chapter on the “Era of Handicraft’.  The next section of the book may be why some religious leaders did not appreciate the line of thinking that Veblen was taking.  He referred to several times about the “cult” of religion.  He also notes that religious and theological thinking dominated the nature of overall preconceptions of most people.  Further, academic inquiry was oriented around the question of “what hath God ordained” .


In the handicraft era, that began to shift.  He begins with the good of “man” begins to become the preconception as opposed to the nature and needs of God. Hew rites in characteristic veblenian fashion that “the sentimental ground of conviction comes to the recognized serviceability of the ascertained facts for human use, rather than their conformity with the putative exigencies of a self centered divine will” One can see the shift that Veblen is claiming here and why he would get pushback from religious leaders.


The next few pages cover the idea that impersonal causation or cause and effect are a key implication of the changes wrought during the period of the handicraft era.  These new preconceptions impact both general working conditions and are the foundation of modern science as well. Veblen writes that, “the imputation of casual efficiency to the observed phenomena is so thoroughly a matter of course that there is no sense of imputation in the observers mind” (Veblen, pg. 260, 1914).  Finally, Veblen is making it clear that the changes in preconceptions tend to move people away from anthropomorphic explanations or personal expansion and towards impersonal explanations.


One gets the sense in these paragraphs that the issue is: 1) the era of handicraft and the nature of work technology changes the mind of the people and 2) this is part of Veblen's ongoing contestation with neoclassical economics that people are rational in an economic sense.

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