Writing Resources
Fukuyama’s work The End of History and the Last Man started a broad discussion in modern sociology and philosophy In the book Fukuyama tries to answer the questions Is history directional And Can the scientific method cease to dominate our lives and is it possible for industrialized societies to return to pre modern prescientific ones Is the directionality of history in short reversible Fukuyama 1992 p 80 81 As the supposed mechanism of directed historical changes he chooses the natural sciences because of scientific knowledge various historical changes the form of production changes culture and education and so on In this essay I will comment on the logic of the reasoning of Fukuyama and what he tried to outline in his work Fukuyama believes that the first of the ways that modern science generates change is a military competition The second way is a progressive conquest of nature in order to satisfy the desires of man in another way it is called economic development The possibility of war is a great force for the rationalization of societies and for the creation of uniform social structures across cultures Any state that hopes to maintain its political autonomy is forced to adopt the technology of its enemies and rivals More than that however the threat of war forces states to restructure their social systems along lines most conducive to producing and deploying technology Fukuyama 1992 p 73 In his view it was these circumstances that prompted the Soviet government to undertake fundamental economic reforms to in the future to maintain competitiveness in the economic and military sphere In his arguments Fukuyama comes to the conclusion that science generates the direction of history
