a sign of 'mental deficiency' . Schumacher argues that where there is near total agreement a subject becomes effectively dead; it therefore is the subjects where there is doubt that deserve the most intense research. Schumacher believes in contrast to materialistic science that what is in doubt should be shown prominently, not hidden away or ignored. His biggest complaint against materialistic scientism is that it rejects the validity of certain questions, which for Schumacher are actually the most important questions of all. Materialistic scientism rejects the idea of levels of being, but for Schumacher this leads to a one-sided view of nature. For Schumacher, you can learn much about humanity by studying from the perspective of minerals, plants and animals, because humans contain the lower levels of being. But that is not the full or even the most important part of the story, as he puts "...everything can be learned about him except that which makes us human." Evolutionism Schumacher first states that the evolutionist doctrine clearly sits in the descriptive sciences rather than instructive sciences. Schumacher accepts that evolution as a generalization within the descriptive science of biological change has been established beyond any doubt whatsoever. However, he considers the 'evolutionist doctrine' to be a very different matter. The evolutionist doctrine purports to prove and explain biological change in the same manner as the proof and explanation offered by the instructional sciences. Schumacher quotes the 1975 Encyclopædia Britannica as an example of this view "Darwin did two things: he showed that evolution was in fact contradicting scriptural legends of creation and that its cause, natural selection, was automatic leaving no room for divine guidance or design." He considers the evolutionist doctrine to be a major philosophical and scientific error. Schumacher argues that the evolutionist doctrine starts with the perfectly reasonable explanation of change in living beings, and then jumps to using it as an explanation for the development of consciousness, self-awareness, language, social institutions and the origin of life itself. Schumacher points out that making this conceptual leap simply does not meet the standards of scientific rigor and the uncritical acceptance of this leap is, for Schumacher, completely unscientific. Levels of being For Schumacher one of science's major mistakes has been rejecting the traditional philosophical and religious view that the universe is a hierarchy of being. Schumacher makes a restatement of the traditional chain of being. He agrees with