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Crime rates have soared as the theories of criminologists were put into practice; educational test scores have plummeted as new educational theories were tried. Indeed, no small part of the intellectual’s achievement has been in keeping empirical verification off the agenda. Moreover, those who are more essentially intellectual in occupation—primarily producers of ideas—have been both more avid and more favored in power terms than those who produce tangible benefits in verifiable form. It is not the agronomists, physicians, or engineers who have risen to power, but the sociologists, psychologists, and legal theorists. It is the latter group who have transformed the political and social landscape in the United States and much of the Western world. Not only is much of their cognitive output inherently unverifiable empirically; they have by various definitions and axiomatic procedures made their output even less susceptible of authentication than it would be otherwise. The jargon alone in these fields makes their substance largely inaccessible to outsiders. Transitionism explains away all disastrous consequences as the short-run price for long-run triumph. They have conquered by faith rather than works. This is hardly surprising in the light of similar achievements by religious intellectuals who preceded them by centuries. Whatever has made human beings eager to hear those who claim to know the future has worked for modern as well as ancient intellectuals.

-- Thomas Sowell