Axiology – the ‘science of value’

Axiology is the ‘science of value’ and its origins date back to the works of early Greek philosophers who sought to understand and define value.

Greek Philosophers

This quest went on for thousands of years only taking a giant leap forward in the 20th century, when the father of modern value science, Robert S Hartman, developed his Value Theory, while attempting to define the meaning of what is ‘good’, since philosophers had consistently failed to achieve this.

Hartman flees the Nazis

Hartman, a German philosopher and scientist was born in Berlin on 27 January 1910 as Robert Schirokauer. He taught at Berlin University and served as an assistant District Court Judge but because of his vocal opposition to the Nazi Party, he was forced flee Germany in 1932, with the Nazi takeover imminent, and changed his surname to Hartman.

Between 1934–41, still under surveillance from the Nazis, he worked as Walt Disney’s representative, first in Scandinavia and later in Mexico and Central America. In 1941, with his wife and son, he moved to the United States, where they all later became citizens. Hartman lectured extensively throughout the US, Canada, Latin America and Europe, where he held more than 50 lectureships, was a visiting professor at Yale University and a research professor of philosophy at both the National University of Mexico and the University of Tennessee.

What is ‘Good’?

Having experienced Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, through what he saw as the successful organisation of evil, Hartman dedicated his work to try to answer the fundamental question: ‘What is good?’

He wrestled with the answer to the question in such a way that good can be organised to help to preserve and enhance the value of human life. Axiology, the science of value, a theoretical area in which Hartman specialised, helped him to find the answer. Influenced by several moral philosophers, notably GE Moore, Hartman concluded: “A thing is good when it fulfills the intension of its concept.”

The Discovery of ‘Value Mathematics’

Hartman theorised that the primary difference between natural order and moral disorder lay in the mathematics which orders the natural world. His discovery that all value has scientific order based on trans-infinite mathematical sets, was comparable with those of Einstein, Galileo and Newton. In doing so, he identified the principles which order and structure not only our moral decisions, but all our value judgements.

Hartman’s theory was that we all think and make decisions in the same way, that there are three core decision making dimensions and he called this, the “Structure of Thought”. Hartman spent the rest of his life proving his theory scientifically.

From a ‘single norm’ in the structure of thought – to a modern day recruitment tool

Hartman’s approach was NOT based on simply observing behaviour or personality as it is in psychology and he proved his theory with a totally objective mathematical formula. This formula measures how people think and how they make decisions. This was a major discovery because unlike ‘subjective norms’ that come as a result of observing behaviour and personality, Hartman discovered that the structure of thought has its own single norm. This norm is the same for people all over the world, regardless of culture, race, income, age, gender, or other factors – we all have the same structure of thought.

Hartman didn’t create subjective norms, his science validation confirms a norm – a single objective norm that already exists in all of us. It is only when a measurement is totally objective that you can trust its accuracy.

Robert S Hartman was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in 1973 but died in that same year. His legacy is very much with us today in the Hartman Value Profile which was the first axiological instrument, an inventory which measured a person’s capacity to make value judgments about the world and self.

The development of the original Hartman Value Profile into today’s Axia Profile is the result of over 35 years of continuous work by a student of Hartman and genius in his own right – Professor Wayne Carpenter (see History)