Intelligent Use of Reason J The first condition for such an intelligent use of reason in the ordering ot human affairs is that we learn to understand what role it does in fact play and can play in the working of any society based on the co-operation of many separate minds. This means that, before we can try to remold society intelligently, we must understand its functioning; we must realize lat, even when we believe that we understand it, we may be mistaken lat we must learn to understand is that human civilization has a life of ts own, that all our efforts to improve things must operate within a working whole which we cannot entirely control, and the operation of whose forces we can hope merely to facilitate and assist so far as we understand them. Our attitude ought to be similar to that of the physician toward a living organism; like him, we have to deal with a self-maintaining whole which is kept going by forces which we cannot replace and which we must therefore use in all we try to achieve. What can be done to improve it must be done by working with these forces rather than against them. In all our endeavor at improvement we must always work inside this given whole, aim at piecemeal, rather than total, construction and use at each stage the historical material at hand and improve details step by step rather than attempt to redesign the whole Friedrich A, Hayek The Constitution of Liberty pp69-70Intelligent Use of Reason ◼ The first condition for such an intelligent use of reason in the ordering of human affairs is that we learn to understand what role it does in fact play and can play in the working of any society based on the co-operation of many separate minds. This means that, before we can try to remold society intelligently, we must understand its functioning; we must realize that, even when we believe that we understand it, we may be mistaken. What we must learn to understand is that human civilization has a life of its own, that all our efforts to improve things must operate within a working whole which we cannot entirely control, and the operation of whose forces we can hope merely to facilitate and assist so far as we understand them. Our attitude ought to be similar to that of the physician toward a living organism; like him, we have to deal with a self-maintaining whole which is kept going by forces which we cannot replace and which we must therefore use in all we try to achieve. What can be done to improve it must be done by working with these forces rather than against them. In all our endeavor at improvement we must always work inside this given whole, aim at piecemeal, rather than total, construction, and use at each stage the historical material at hand and improve details step by step rather than attempt to redesign the whole. ◼ Friedrich A. Hayek The Constitution of Liberty pp69-70