Scientism and Values

mSocial Science Versus the Obsession of \"Scientism\" 231society exists, remains articulate, and is capable of disagreement.Freedom is an undefined abstraction which refers to many differ-ent and often incongruous situations. It is in the nature of a syn-optic description, like the term \"health,\" except that it refers to afar larger number of elements. In much the same way as a dyingman still has healthy organs, freedom is never completely extin-guished in all human areas. Just as the disease of a vital organ ter-minates health, so nonfreedom or too little freedom denotes thelack of freedom as such. Thus, freedom is not merely a matter ofdegrees, but also of quality. Whenever we speak of \"freedom,\" we really imply \"more\" or\"less\" freedom. Thus, we are dealing with a notion which is in-herently measurable, or which, in any case, contains many measur-able elements. It is possible to measure freedom. 7 Keeping in mindthe distinction between the basic types of freedom, we would thenhave to measure: (1) the legal constraints imposed upon an individual's freedom of action; (2) the capabilities at the individual's disposal and rates of change of constraints and capabilities; (3) the utilization of these capabilities both in terms of de facto use and of responsible behavior; (4) the human results of such capabilities utilized. Freedom is far broader than simple political rights, however im-portant those may be. It can be considered independently of spe-cific aspects of political organization, as it must be if it is indeeda structural element of society as a whole. But, in addition to pay-ing attention to the intents, causes, modes, and limits of individualbehavior, we also must know the results of such action. It is, afterall, not the institution which counts, but its yield. Once we knowthe yield, we possess a yardstick for evaluating organizational andinstitutional structure and performance. How much freedom didthe institution produce? And at what price? This is the heart ofthe matter.fci^^nTiTnwiMTiBBmTiTTiwtnergTnTm ii i ii i iii inmaii i ii imrnmniTTfi™— ————-——--------—---—--——*

232 Scientism and Values VII have dwelt on the hypothetical example of the \"measure-ment of freedom\" because it seems to me as being characteristic of— —the problems the real problems which are the concern of thepolitical scientist. It illustrates the need for a theory and a meth-odology (including a sociometry that does not plagiarize methodsof measurement devised for an inanimate ordre de grandeur). Thescience of politics is as yet poorly armed for dealing meaningfullywith problems that are incontestably its own and, more impor-tantly, matter crucially to all peoples here and now.Formal democracy is an essential prerequisite, but not the ful-fillment of freedom. Dictatorships do receive popular support. Ourwonderment at this incontrovertible fact is nourished by the as-sumption that dictatorships violate all aspirations to freedom,while democracy satisfies them all. This is not so.Dictatorship has many advantages. As a rule, it has a sense ofdirection and mission. Dictatorship is served by genuine dedica-tion. Dictatorship suffers less than does democracy from anomyin decision-making. Under dictatorship, most people are lessbored, regardless of the fact that bustling dedication may not servea good cause and that social zest is kept alive at the cost of indi-vidual privacy.No doubt the overcommitment to formal democracy and to thesatisfaction of predominantly material interests has impeded theprogress of liberty. The free world has been talking about rights,equality of men and peoples, the welfare of large numbers, andeconomic security. All these things are important. But we have nottalked about obligation and discipline, emotional security, wiseand ethical choices, happiness, and creativity.Democracy has yielded all too easily to the depreciation of itscurrency. It has been content to \"adjust\" too many of its valuesand institutions to mundane pressures and intellectual fashions. Ithas been easy, therefore, for the exponents of various naturalisticphilosophies and psychologies to conceive of democratic institu-tions as empty of moral purpose, as mere stables of the human ani-Wemal. should have tried, and we now must try, to build liberty

Social Science Versus the Obsession of \"Scientism\" 233for the moral person. Perhaps it is unfair to say that we have ne-glected to preoccupy ourselves with the human problem in its truedimension. Our bodies are better cared for than they ever were,but our minds are anguished and our creative powers stifled. Free-dom cannot be won and preserved like a jar of marmalade. Free-dom, in its deepest meaning, is a creative process. The free worldhas still a positive mission. It is the task of the science of politics under freedom to developthe disciplines and to fashion the tools of creative freedom. Scien-tism has devoured a goodly portion of democracy's intellectual andmoral patrimony. The science of politics has to replace much thathas been lost to the academic hosts of the scientistic fury. Perhaps— —the very challenge of the times a mortal challenge will callforth, in society as a whole, recuperative forces and, in the halls ofsocial science, a responsible and competent concern with the searchfor truth.NOTES1. Aldous Huxley, Science, Liberty and Peace (New York, 1959), pp. 32-35.2. Edna Heidebreder, Seven Psychologies (New York, 1933), pp. 263-270.3. F. A. Hayek, The Counter-Revolution of Science (Glencoe, 111., 1952), p. 34.4. Leland B. Yeager, \"Measurement as Scientific Method in Economics,\" The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, XVI, No. 4, 344-345.5. C. Northcote Parkinson, Parkinson's Law or the Pursuit of Progress (London, 1958).6. For a perceptive critique of social \"laws\" and the meaningfulness of cor- relation of social \"variables,\" see Kenneth Boulding, The Organizational Revolution (New York, 1953), 76-77, and Ruth Benedict, \"Social Strati- fication and Political Power,\" in R. Bendix and S. M. Lipset, eds., Class, Status and Power (Glencoe, 111., 1956), p. 608.7. I am indebted to Stefan T. Possony for a concise statement of the prob- lem of \"measuring\" freedom in his mimeographed The Meaning and Measurement of Freedom, Foreign Policy Research Institute (University of Pennsylvania, 1957). Editor's Comment Some critics will question the possibility of measuring free-dom; others will perhaps accept it, but wonder about this new—\"scientism\" the measurement of values that ought not to be

234 Scientism and Valuessubject to yardsticks. However, there are indeed fairly simple waysof measuring freedom that will not degrade the entity beingmeasured. For instance, we have statistics at our disposal recordingyear after year how many individuals, families, and people in vari-—ous occupations, choose freedom they leave from behind the IronCurtain. We have such data for East Germany, Hungary, RedChina, Tibet, and other areas where individuals make a choice—from among relative degrees of freedom such as, for example,between the not-quite-so-oppressive communism in Tito's Yugo-slavia and their opportunity to escape into Italy. Moreover, we can measure in meaningful units, if we want to,the time persons have to spend in offices of the authorities in orderto get permission to migrate, to leave a country, to change occu-pation or residence. All these important segments of a man's dailylife are related to freedom. American readers may not be able tosee their importance at once because they yet know so few controlsover their personal lives. All we meant here is that just as well asUNthe can study the degrees of censorship of the press in variouscountries on a comparative basis, we might try to get similar datafor other areas of human freedom, not just the journalist's. H. Schoeck.

12 Social Science As Autonomous Activity Henry S. Kariel This essay * seeks to delineate an approach to understandinghuman society. Those who partake in this approach are persuadedthat, far from trying to construct some specific social order orlearning how to fit men into it, they prefer public policies whichwill provide the conditions for the unimpeded pursuit of happi-ness. They duly respect the various opinions and interests of indi-vidual men. Yet their work indicates that more is involved, for it—contains uneasily coexisting elements an on-duty scientific oneand an off-duty moralistic one. Both elements embody values. Tothe extent that these values are in conflict and press on to victory,both social science and liberal-democratic institutions are threat-ened, for they require one another. Survival of neither seemslikely if either an unqualified science or an unqualified moralismtriumphs. If it could be shown that liberal-democratic theory isunrelated to the work pursued and therefore fails to confine thescientific quest, while, at the same time, much of social science isimpelled to reach out so as to incorporate liberal-democratic insti- *While responsibility for the ideas here set forth is fully mine, I have benefitedfrom discussions with three members of the Society of Fellows, Harvard University:George Kateb, Peter M. Ray, and Franklin M. Fisher. I am also grateful to theWestern Political Quarterly for permission to draw on my article, \"The New Orderof Mary Parker Follett,\" published September, 1955. 235

236 Scientism and Valuestutions, it may be obvious why today it is far less pertinent to re-state professed moral sentiments than to retrace some of the valueassumptions which give meaning, coherence, and prestige to re-search. The research here specifically focused on is concerned, inbrief, with the construction and the testing of abstract concep-tional systems composed of neutral terms which are seen ascapable, at least in principle, of relating every effective variable.Postulating all social forces to be in a state of natural balancewithin a self-rectifying and self-sufficient order, it is committed toa norm which allows reference to existing communities. As an in-strumental science, it is believed to be able to determine howwhatever is variable might be economically moved toward thenorm. Because it systematically functionalizes human goals, theonly norms which restrain it are, ideally, the agreed-upon rules ofsocial science. This capsule characterization begs for elaboration. What is becoming increasingly clear is that a traditional empha-sis of social science on distinguishing between the degrees of ex-cellence of social institutions, historical regimes, public policies, orindividual doctrines is being replaced by a stress on the formula-tion of an architectonic descriptive theory of social behavior. 1 Thisstress, one not without antecedents in the history of ideas, is mani-fest in a concern for the progressive refinement of operationalmethods. Identified by an array of vague labels which significantly—suggest the convergence of various disciplines labels such as func-tionalism, sociometry, operationalism, equilibrium analysis, topo-logical psychology, social field theory, social geometry, homeostatic—model construction, or even sociopsychobiology truly syntheticknowledge is being earnestly pursued and, so it would appear, re-spectably endowed. Such a body of knowledge is to give formal expression to rela-tionships between sensed phenomena. These phenomena, con-nected by a network of logical or quantitative notations, are not

Social Science As Autonomous Activity 237examined for their intrinsic merits. They are kept from becomingthe object of discourse. The aim is not the disclosure and objecti-fication of equivocal meanings and values, but, on the contrary,their systematic elimination. The remaining theoretical structure,deliberately removed from experience, is to constitute a positivenatural science of society. The obstacles to its formulation, it is conceded, seem insuper-able because they have been so firmly built into the mind of West-ern man that even as he attempts to reflect upon them they standin his way. The very character of thought and language allows formisleading distinctions between value-attributing subject and pas-sive object, between substance and function. These distinctions arebelieved to keep thought from becoming objective, permitting itto correspond, not to the structure of the forces at large in theworld, but to the ever-varying desires of individuals. 2 The need,therefore, is to escape the prison of a language incorporatingvalues, to cease using quality-ascribing adjectives which intrigu-ingly hint at the existence of essentials, and to center at last ondynamic processes. It becomes important to extinguish symbolsuseful only when the channels of communication are not clear,when redundancies are required to catch our attention or over-come noises on the line. The residual system will embrace allmeaningful facts of social life, living up to Galileo's great vision:Philosophy is written in that vast book which stands ever open beforeour eyes, I mean the universe; but it cannot be read until we havelearnt the language and become familiar with the character in whichit is written. It is written in mathematical language, and the lettersare triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whichmeans it is humanly impossible to comprehend a single word. 3 This geometric design, once apprehended in its fullness, cannotbe defiled by historical change. As an absolute, it will be radicallyunhistorical, compressing past and future into a timeless frame.Thus, in psychology, to introduce but one example, the informedwill repress all dramatic language and shift to a functional inter- — --^--

238 Scientism and Valuespretation of personality. As M. Brewster Smith has authoritativelywritten, 4Modern psychology, historical or otherwise, is in fact overwhelminglyfunctional. The dominant strain is oriented toward a model of theorganism as a self-regulating system and falls naturally into the useof terms like homeostasis, equilibrium and adjustment; while themarginal influence of Gestalt theory leads to parallel emphasis on thefield determination of phenomenal properties or behavior tendencies.Formerly, when the emphasis had been on habits, traits, change,and action, only the historical approach would do. Today, accord-ing to Smith, it is fruitful to transcend specific histories, to laybare a scheme defining the individual's nonhistorical, extempora-—neous behavioral dispositions. Such a scheme one claimed not—merely for a strain of psychology will be a perfect accountingsystem. It will fully take care of all contingencies, clearly showingthat perception of miracle, novelty, or accident must be a symptomof faulty vision or a function of an uncontrolled body of impulses.It is backed by the notion that everything scientifically significantis attached, determined, and at hand. Though much meaningfuldata may remain hidden until duly approached, all of it is em-phatically present, more or less deeply embedded in the presentstate of man's development. Through the proper method it might—be made to yield truthful correlations correlations which haveheld in the past as they must surely hold in the future. The realcan thus be forced to disclose itself as the ideal while, simultane-ously, the ideal can be forced to disclose itself as the real. II Of course, social scientists are not conspiring to found a statewhich, however unrealized, they believe to be woven into the na-ture of tilings. To borrow a phrase from American public law,they are merely engaged in parallel action. They labor as if set toactualize a holistic system of elementary relations. And they restwhenever their approach dissolves the peculiarities they encounter,

Social Science As Autonomous Activity 239revealing them to be congruent and organized. They are satisfiedto the extent that they establish a necessary connection betweensociety and nature. They know that a concern with an unrealiz-able world must irresponsibly devitalize the scientific activity ofdeveloping hypotheses which deal successfully with men in motion. It may seem, deceptively, that their activity will cause humanvalues to be shunned, that the norms so obviously present in thesocial field under investigation will be disregarded. Yet, in fact,values will be given their credit when shown to be functions of anefficacious system, one which is at once empirically describableand susceptible to an objective ordering. This is the case eventhough at present there are no satisfactory quantitative terms todesignate degrees of functionality without postulating value predi-cates. But while it is true, as David Easton has seen, 5 that it has notyet been possible \"to reduce the complex power relations of societyto the necessary numerical quantities, and [that] there is little pros-pect that in the foreseeable future it will be in a position to do so,\"Athe ideal remains. genuinely neutral model should connectvalues with the real substructure of social forces, group pressures,and individual drives. Values cherished because man has exercisedhis reason in the light of his knowledge of the past are not autono-mous determinants; they can gain the status of such determinantsonly when recognized as ideologies, as verbal structures tied tomore fundamental data. Thus values must be identified with thesubstructure of behavior, with the real determinants of thoughtand action. Human ideals must not be set off from facts, but beequated with them, losing their distinctive qualities. Or, moreaccurately, they must be exhibited in a new setting which makesit clear that they had actually never merited distinction in the firstplace. In this framework they will be stabilized because realized.Their new setting will provide full correlations, excepting nothingfrom its grasp, necessarily handling all meaningful behavior, in-cluding the norms and purposes which nonscientific preconcep-tions respect as incommensurable, unstable, and variable. The job for social science then becomes, as a matter of course,one of reducing existing instabilities and variations. In this way, the significant facts about social structures will be revealed. Theo-

240 Scientism and Valuesdore M. Newcomb has sympathetically reviewed what this is likelyto imply, for example, for psychology:There is no harder lesson for the psychologist to learn, probably, thanthat of viewing persons as functionaries in a group structure rather—than as psychological organisms i.e., as parts rather than as wholes,and as parts which, within limits, are interchangeable. Once this lesson is learned, however, the facts of social structurebecome available; a social system is seen as made up of differentiatedparts, the orderly relationships among which, rather than the personalidentity of which, become the major object of concern.6Far more broadly, Hannah Arendt, noting the implications offunctionalizing the purposive, dramatic content of intellectual cat-egories, has shown how it has become possible, for example, toidentify Hitler and Jesus because functionally their roles wereindistinguishable. 7 Such linking of variables becomes essential toa science intent on dealing with all components of a social field asrole-playing functionaries so as to make society explicable. Fullexplication requires treating society as a system whose parts, intheory if not in momentarily stubborn fact, \"make sense,\" all beingduly related, complementing and balancing one another. On the basis of this assumption of the natural harmony of struc-tural components, the quest for knowledge may proceed. By thetraditional method of (1) postulating a hypothesis which mighteconomically relate variables, (2) following through by making de-ductions, (3) checking whether the hypothesis corresponds to senseexperience, and (4) accepting, amending, or rejecting the hypothe-—sis by this method reality may be known. 8 Hypotheses, assuredly,may have to be reversed by \"factual reality.\" Yet, it should benoted, only after agreement is reached as to what is meant by\"facts\" do facts actually have the final say: facts, it is held, must beso constituted as to leave manifest traces before they can be given a—voice. The social scientist's hypotheses devised to lead him to uni-—formities of behavior will permit rational, scientific control onlyof such facts as take their place in his conceptual order of uni-formly related, coexisting parts. His very approach is designed to

Social Science As Autonomous Activity 241permit nothing capricious, unique, or dysfunctional to slipthrough. When his postulational system makes for the appropriatediscriminations, it is a pure theory, one through which it is possi-ble to discern all the dynamically interacting facts of social reality.Thus, the concern of social science is inescapably with the poten-cies and the actualities of reality. It is, to use Nietzsche's apt—phrase, concerned with \"quantities of will,\" with power itsextent and its use.Ill The theory giving integrity to such concerns is not, of course,to be confused with any concrete society. It is merely an analyticalmodel. Nevertheless, it is believed to identify the character of nat-ural conditions, the impetus immanent in historical processes.While it may appear that no particular process is thus valued overany other, a formal valuation does emerge. The notion that \"a dys-function is a condition, or state of affairs that (1) results from theoperation (including in the term operation mere persistence) of astructure of a given unit through time and (2) lessens the adapta-tion or adjustment to the unit's setting, thus making for the lackof persistence of the unit as defined of which the structure con-—cerned is a part or aspect\" 9 this notion leaves the underlying re-spect for integration and balance scarcely in doubt. Sound researchmust concern itself with the specification of ties which provide forthe system's unity, which enable it to cohere and persist. The taskof social studies is thus easily defined: it is to identify the socialstructure and determine what is functional. It is to gain knowledgeof the factors which engage what is idle, attract what is distracted,enlist what is weary. It is to search for the conditions of instability,the prerequisites of stability. It is to restore upset balances, resolve— —conflicts, heal sore spots, and most important, perhaps removeblocks to understanding. To be sure, the knowledge thus accumulated can be used toachieve a nonconservative end. But such an achievement, certainlypossible, could not be certified as scientific at a time when thesocial world is simply assumed to be nothing but a fundamentallyclosed, boundary-maintaining, and internally harmonious system. «

242 Scientism and Values—Whether the social scientist intuits universals assuming the risks—of Burckhardt, Spengler, Weber, and Benedict or determines,more empirically, just what to do in order to ensure a system'sperpetuity, 10 he is directed to engage in patterning deviant ele-ments, and this all the more energetically as he identifies knowl-edge with the realization of an immanent \"true state of affairs,\"with what would spontaneously occur in the social world were allimpediments removed. As long as this approach remained purely formal and analytical,as it did in the relativistic, comparative analyses of Burckhardt andWeber, it also left unsettled just what the specific impediments tothe ideal might be. Hence, discussion about them was not fore-closed. But the abridgement of discussion is fostered as a substan-tive definition of a disequilibrium is implied. It would be moretedious than difficult to show how massively this is the case, withwhat readiness undesirable deviants are actually being identified:they are widely seen as the conflicts and displacements which haveflowered thanks to modern man's complex industrial society. Onlya deeply prejudiced person, it is made to appear, will fail to dis-cern that whatever man's twentieth-century opportunities andgoods, the present is a painful era of community disruption, com-plicated politics, and endless factional crises. If this offered diag-nosis is far too broad, it is believed to cover so many contemporaryrelationships that the application of social skills, of knowledgeabout human relations, becomes imperative indeed. And thisknowledge, at its best, is seen as the product of social science. There being no question regarding what substantively consti-—tutes social delinquencies the nature of the pathological being—virtually self-evident \" social science may rightly apply its knowl-edge and its methods, working to discover how individuals mightbe moved with speed and efficiency toward the common, healthygoal. 1 1 becomes credible to argue that psychologists shouldseek to provide a basic science of human thinking, character, skilllearning, motives, conduct, etc., which will serve all the sciences olman (e.g., anthropology, sociology, economics, government, education,

Social Science As Autonomous Activity 243medicine, etc.) in much the same way and to the same extent thatbiology now serves the agricultural and medical sciences. 12The ends of just government, it may be inferred, are so fixed thatthe scientist-governor may furnish the means. Moreover, the lawsof psychology may be applied precisely as agronomists and physi-cians apply the laws of biology: to maximize food production andprolong life. Like the interest of the engineer, that of the social scientist mayconsequently center on the means to achieve given ends, to treatthe diseases of the body politic. Knowing the common good, he willbe prepared and subsidized to perfect the devices for gaining con-sensus on it and to aid in its attainment. Thus, as social therapistsand policy scientists will show, in the language of Harold D.Lasswell, 13 a \"lively concern . . . for the problem of overcoming thedivisive tendencies of modern life and of bringing into existence amore thorough integration of the goals and methods of public andprivate action,\" politics itself will become infused by science. As this infusion proceeds, a convergence of social science disci-plines is only to be expected. On the assumption, articulated byJohn Gillin, 14 that \"the social or behavioral sciences could do witha bit more order in their house,\" integration is being urged. Socialscientists are invited to join up and work on an orderly \"science of—social man\" one which requires, according to Gillin, 15 that socialscientists suspend those competitive urges which impel them, todistinguish themselves, that they suspend behavior having the\"tendency on occasion ... of cluttering the field with a variety ofostensibly theoretical statements. . . .\" It seems that \"it must per-haps be remembered that we live in a culture which also values'cooperation with others' and 'self-discipline.' \" Mark A. May, ashead of Yale University's Institute of Human Relations, has logi-cally followed this theme through: 16Our particular academic culture [May said during a roundtable dis-cussion on \"Integration of the Social Sciences\"] tends to rewardrugged individualism. . . .

244 Scientism and Values I am a strong believer in rewards and punishments. The prescrip-tion for getting more integration in the social sciences is to rewardheavily all activities that look in that direction, provided that theyare solid and sound and promising. It is important, also to reduce therewards that have been so heavily attached to specialization. . . . Thepractical application of this theory lies in the hands of those who sitat the controls of the system of rewards and punishments in colleges,universities, foundations, and scientific societies. IVUnited in their aim of constructing and testing a behavioralscience, social scientists are induced to engage in operations whichare not checked, theoretically, by anything but their own power tobe operative. Of course, prescriptions for social health do notcountenance every kind of action. Limitations are imposed by thevery purposes for which social science techniques are brought tobear on society. The techniques themselves being wholly neutral,they take on the color of the objective for which they are used.The goodness of the objective being granted, implementation mayproperly proceed.But the value of the posited objective is itself defined only by itsAncapacity to fulfill a function scientifically determinable. ade-quate social science cannot credit human objectives as irreducible,for they are deemed to lie within its own domain of means andare, therefore, considered to be amenable to functionalization.They are understood as instruments of, not as guides to, humanaspirations, as tools for survival and mastery. The final test oftheir validity is the very one that is applied to the constructs ofscience, with the result that myths, ideals, ideologies, and scientificToformulations all acquire identity. the extent that scientificknowledge of the links between social phenomena is certain andtrustworthy, such knowledge becomes knowledge of objectives.Seemingly a sharp distinction between the scientific formula-tions which order the world and the world itself remains. Butwhen it is assumed that the ordering formulations are an inherentpart of nature, wrested from it by the scientific effort to controlemergencies, to conquer chance, and to make life liveable, they -- '

Social Science As Autonomous Activity 245retain no independence save that arbitrarily assigned them. Theyare legitimate only because they happen to be potent, efficient, or—instrumental. All structuring of the natural world including, ofcourse, of the social world, of the behavior and conduct of indi-—vidual persons is based on the belief that those scientific con-structs which apparently transcend natural behavior cannot justlybe distinguished from it. They are but a form of behavior, a kindof factual datum essentially indistinct from those passions whichdrive men to seek power and satisfy their need systems. To controlconstructs themselves, to impose a check on science, is to cut intoits capacity for experimental action. It is at once unnatural andsuicidal, for it delimits science, accepting not its own reason, butone which professes to transcend it. Such adherence to metaphysi-cal dogma would be self-deceptive when not used as a device fordeceiving others. Those who wish to rid themselves of deception—and act in a spirit of objectivity must exercise their will pre-sumably their good will. 17 They must impose upon the social flux,set men in motion, interact with their data, learn by doing, verifyby testing. Knowledge of laws defining social relations in their natural,untouched, and untested state is impossible. To be sure, one isfrequently compelled to make the attempt to verify hypothesesby conducting tests in an environment smaller than the one forwhich the hypotheses are hoped to hold true. Or one may projectfrom past or distant situations about which facts are readily avail-able for correlations. These two methods are indeed conventionaland serviceable, yielding knowledge sufficiently exact for suchpractical purposes as navigating through storms, finding oil underthe soil, anticipating the demands of consumers, or predictingthe choices of voters. Yet, in terms of the ideal of science, bothmethods are troublesome all the same. The first assumes thatidentical causes will tend to produce identical effects, that outsidethe laboratory nothing is likely to intervene and make effectsdisproportionate to their causes. The well-recognized trouble hereis that in human affairs (and not merely in human affairs) somethings sometimes do manage to intervene, however minutely, and—that consequently if the truth is to be known and if only the-

246 Scientism and Values—testable is admitted as truth the progressive extension of thelaboratory becomes an imperative. Harold D. Lasswell's observa-tions are to the point: 18The principal limitation [to the experimental approach] is that manyof the most elegant findings can only be transferred to other labora-tories. They cannot be transferred to field situations because there isno technique of demonstrating in the field the degree in which theconditions assumed as constant in the laboratory do in fact occur.For this reason, \"bridges need to be built between laboratorysituations and field situations.\" It becomes a necessary \"refine-ment ... to take the laboratory design into the field and to applyit to a whole community context. In such a setting many of theprocedures devised under laboratory conditions take on newmeaning.\" The field, in effect transformed into laboratory, may\"then be explored more intensively in order to identify thevariables that account for the deviation. This can be done byapplying more laboratory-type measures at the proper spots andby instituting a program of 'probers,' 'pre-tests,' 'interventions,'and 'appraisals.' \" The second method, that of extrapolation, may be seen in itsconsequences as but a variant of the first, assuming as it doesthat variables which coexisted in the past will tend to do so inthe future. The experience, however rare, that they will not, thateven tendencies may be upset, indicates the essential shortcoming,in terms of the scientific ideal, of a method which is satisfied withstatistical correlations. 19 \"The infinite variety of causal sequencesto which every act and event in history is related,\" ReinholdNicbuhr has pointed out, 20 \"makes almost every correlation ofcauses sufficiently plausible to be immune to compelling chal-lenge.\" The ideal of empirical science is exact knowledge on thebasis of which men might act without further consideration ofalternatives, without further study, research, reflection, or debate.Before the scientist will be justified in claiming that particularconditions have such objective existence, he must have exercised

Social Science As Autonomous Activity 247full control. Unless he has, his discoveries cannot be the finalground for action. When his formulations are nevertheless accepted as the finalground for action, the assumption must be that his knowledge iscomplete, that the real problems and their natural, necessarysolutions are known. To act on the basis of such knowledge is infact to order variables in the light of what is conceived as in-dubitably real or true. Such ordering constitutes the exercise ofcontrol. Since it is possible to obtain certain empirical knowledgeonly of those relations which men have transfused by their will,which men have actually constructed and in which they can ulti-mately encounter only themselves, empirical science demands theexercise of the will, a grappling with a nature which insists onhaving its intrinsic properties. It becomes exasperating and chal-lenging to realize that speculative, reflective knowledge of theworld, because of the all-pervasiveness of bias, because man is adetermined creature, can be only coincidentally accurate. Beingso much part of nature, man cannot truly find out what it is. Hecannot look upon it with objectivity; he cannot assess it fromabove; he cannot gain a disinterested view of it. But by no means does this require him to give up his quest forknowledge. He feels free to reinterpret the quest, to make it be-come one for survival within nature, one for natural power overthe competing forces of life. Thus, the purpose of science be-comes a pseudo purpose: control, not in reference to a transcend-ing objective, but for its own sake. Thereby science, equated withspontaneous right action, gains autonomy, a condition not likelyto be frowned upon when its ethos is wholly identified with arationale for liberal-democratic institutions. 21 It becomes self-re-liant and self-justifying; it is measured, not against a higher orderof reality, not against standards anteceding the conventions ofempirical science, but against an ideal which values the capacityto exercise power, to be effective, to flex one's instruments (in-cluding ideologies and myths) for the control of nature, of society,and of man. Thus a genuine science is manipulative knowledge;it is a body of concepts viewed as valid when they yield results in __

—248 Scientism and Valuesapplication. Indeed, a true order of being, an objective model ofnature, is not one which man gets out of nature, but one whichhe imputes to it. The main scientific task, therefore, is to make ofnature what one will. Objective knowledge being foreclosed—for nature is undeniably obstinate subjective action takes itsplace. In so far as science requires an attitude of radical skepticismtoward relations not yet fixed by scientific resolutions, not yetproved valid under ever more controlled conditions, it exacts apledge for continuous experimentation, every other approach togain understanding being but second best. While a fringe of—human and social nature may always hold out and will, to that—extent, be beyond understanding testing will permit ever-in-creasing knowledge and control. The confirming of hypotheseswill mean both adding to theoretical insight and reshaping thesocial world. Indeed, the constructs of science will make the socialworld, since they alone govern and bestow status. It is true thatcompliance may be hard to exact, that society may not be infinitelypliable, that there are imprecise forces at work which keep menfrom bending. Yet it is the existence of these very forces whichalways poses the initial question. For unless these, too, are con-trolled, every statement about the true nature of social or politicalthings remains tentative. The task, therefore, is to reduce whatevermakes management difficult, to concentrate on those slipperyfactors which, though still ungoverned, must be made amenableto scientific government. As one social scientist has explained, 22Having identified to our satisfaction the relevant factors in a situation,the next step [in following a scientific method] is to select those whichwe can effectively control. The ideal setup is one wherein we cancontrol every factor. At the present state of the social sciences this isa mere dream. For one thing, in social science we are still lackinghandles, tongs, pliers or what you will with which to grasp a situa-tional factor for manipulative purposes. Poorly equipped though it be, science must put everythingof significance within its grasp. Potentially nothing can be exempt

—Social Science As Autonomous Activity 249from the attempt to establish that social theories are valid, thatthey work, or that, in the language of Hobbes, some sovereignmight convert the truth of speculation into the utility of practice.For it is felt that the knowable world contains nothing un-controllable, that it is devoid of phenomena not susceptible, inprinciple, to scientific formulation, circumscription, and enclo-sure. Yet it should be noted that science's own framework, includingthe rules of procedure by which it is built up, remains free. Unlikethe data it orders, it is incommensurate, introduced to rid theworld of what is designated as risky, providential, or fateful. Thisframework is the potent variable, presumably defining states ofpower relations with objectivity by giving these relations symbolicor numerical attributes. These attributes, however, must in prac-tice always constitute a normative standard, for departure fromthem will make a system's survival unlikely: departure will pro-duce lawlessness and decay. This cannot mean, certainly, that the social scientist, even whenbent on the prevention of social conflict and the maintenance ofpublic health, will go out into the world and literally make good.He may be less interested than Hobbes in having his writingsfall into the hands of a sovereign. Depending on his temper, onthe vitality of a residual tradition, or on prevailing social re-—straints all of which are practically impressive, but theoretically—irrelevant he may be satisfied with having experienced his vision.Being patient, he may relax after having communicated it to thosewho might listen. But when consistently loyal to his position,he will have to fisrht for its incarnation, stilling whatever voicespresume to resist it, aiding whatever resembles it. He must promptmen to realize their destiny, working not only as their prophetbut also as their redeemer. Moreover, his labor may be supportedby a belief in success for which his eighteenth-century precursorssavants whose almost unified science was ignorant of the mass-—manipulating tools of modern technology could not reasonablyhope. Allied with the powers that be and in the name of theconsummation of science, he may at last move men toward thefull life, toward fulfillment in a historical millennium. 23

—250 Scientism and Values Before outlining a few of the possible consequences of thekind of approach to the study of society which has been discussed,it should be useful to summarize three of its crucial assumptions:(1) The only significant order of social reality is the one inherentlysusceptible to empirical verification, to factor analysis, and phy-sicomathematical reduction; (2) the pursuit of knowledge mani-fests itself in the enactment of norms which inhere in the pursuititself; and (3) it is the function of the scientist to master a nature—including man and society which is devoid of purposes intel-ligible and communicable by man. What are these assumptions likely to imply? If it is held that orders of reality other than those amenable toreduction to functional terms are merely subjective ones, con-jectures about social institutions and policies not susceptible toempirical verification tend to be disparaged. Such speculation,considered untrustworthy, is contrasted to that whose objectivity,empirically confirmed, justifies action along lines making for thefunctionalization of the subject matter of social science. In thisprocess, social science goes to work in the public arena on the—basis of decisive assumptions assumptions posited as if there—were no alternatives to them which those affected by its actiondo not share in formulating. To the extent that the research is theory-oriented, all that isinvolved is constructing frameworks presuming to embrace vari-ables of significance; to the extent that it is oriented toward thesolution of practical problems, it seeks to attain and perpetuatethe final good of social harmony. Both orientations tend to co-operate in integrating dysfunctional forces, in curing social andindividual ills. Contribution to the body of science requires instituting thatstate of unity within which all particulars are truly related. Thisquest is not one for reflective understanding of the nature of thesocial world, but one for bringing history to its terminus byresolving historical conflicts in practice.

Social Science As Autonomous Activity 251 While searching for the final synthesis of the manifold antago-nisms man believes himself to be experiencing, the social scientistmay proceed without objective limits. The limits to his actionare the subjective ones of his energy, his inventiveness, his genius.Seemingly objective schemes of values which presume to re-strain the attempt to control variables dissolve into the \"real\"forces which give rise to them. Other checks are unduly diverting,retarding the accumulation of certain knowledge and the realiza-tion of ideals. Social scientists are thus free to dominate naturewith indifference to its own purposes, which are unintelligiblebecause science cannot establish or validate them. They are freeto press knowledge out of an environment which yields what it isforced to yield by their practical operations, by their thorough-going, endless activity. Potentially, the nature of concern to manis infinitely pliable; its components are infinitely interrelated. Theonly scientific challenge to any particular social arrangement mustbe on the ground that control is not total. Not all arrangements,of course, are equally adequate. Experiments, and the theoriesthey sustain, may be characterized as trivial or important, de-pending on the degree to which they make control possible, towhich they turn nature to man's use. Nature, it is assumed, servesits purpose by being exploited. Its purpose, as Nietzsche was thefirst to urge wholeheartedly, may be imputed to it by the survival-facilitating norms creatively framed by the interested scientist.Denial of this either reflects hidden but analyzable interests orelse is unhealthy and unnatural, clearly not furthering the per-petuation of life, the satisfaction of needs, or the production ofcomfort. When men are prepared to act consistently on the basis of thebeliefs (1) that a single approach to phenomena is socially fruitfuland desirable, (2) that nothing but science itself need restrain theprogressive unification of the social world, and (3) that whatever— —nature including human nature may be, it can potentially bemade into anything else, their action is likely to have severalpractical effects: 1. A unification of the social sciences to carry out a concertedattack on dysfunctional forces, on social and individual disturb-

252 Scientism and Valuesances. This unification requires and justifies identifying sciencewith techniques of manipulation, letting the techniques determinethe valid limits of social research, working for an integration ofthe outlook and resources of social scientists, and penalizing thosewho resist convergence. 2. An attempt to spread information about the potency of themodels of social science. Notational systems, it may be made rea-sonably clear, are efficient implements for action, effective weaponsfor the maintenance or destruction of power, likely to becomeever sharper in application. 3. A gradual enlargement of the area considered suitable forscientific operations so that ever more tracts of life may be orderedobjectively. The depreciation of two major ideals would followfrom this activity: (1) the ideal that agreement should be reached,however temporarily, by a process of political negotiation; (2) theideal that conflicts should be tentatively settled by means of— —human that is, value-ascribing discourse, by dialectical socialphilosophy. As it becomes possible to place goals into a frame within whichthey may be objectively perceived, within which those valueconflicts left inconclusive by parliamentary politics may be settledwith finality, thanks to a neutral \"administration of things,\" theends of life and action are removed from the traditional processof political compromise and dialectical discussion. Such a processmust appear increasingly specious, being predicated on the pos-sibility of human rationality, on the conviction that language maybe informative and can make genuine knowledge available. Whenit is held, to the contrary, that language functions merely to secureor prevent action, to maintain or destroy an equilibrium, to createor undermine consensus, parliamentarianism can be only at-mospherically useful. The assumption that knowledge is gained only by languagewhich has operational meaning and that all other language ration-alizes the drive for power or serves to sublimate aggressions andextend pleasures leads not only to the devaluation of political set-tlements, but also to the rejection of artists, mystics, and philos-ophers as collaborators in the perennial search for final truth.

Social Science As Autonomous Activity 253Their search, it must be held, will inevitably end in a subjectiveacceptance of personal feelings passed off as \"truths,\" and no more.No doubt, such truths may still be clarified, analyzed, or causallyexplained. But they cannot be respected and criticized on themerits as long as all standards in reference to which criticism—might be made including, of course, standards created by social—scientists are themselves deemed to be subjective and conven-tional. Reason, unable to decide between right and wrong conduct,to assess the various purposes of action, to connect man with truth,can serve only to adjust him to his desires, aiding survival. Lawand policy, legislation and politics, therefore, may be understoodas the repercussions of interests, not the ever-amendable result ofrational discourse. To judge or construct the public order, it isnecessary to understand, not the grounds offered for it, but thepower alignments which brought it about, its causes rather thanits merits. Its sole criterion is its effectiveness. Thus, the formula-tion of policy, the drafting of constitutions, become a branch ofan empirical science to which ethics is logically quite irrelevant.And the application of this science to solve the problems faced—by society will naturally require Lasswell, among others, has—stressed this 24 \"the de-emphasizing of much of the traditionalbaggage of metaphysics and theology.\" Politics will become in-creasingly objective and scientific, a calling for the expert tech-nician. 4. A growing respectability of an elite of social engineers asthe procedures by which free societies determine their policy goalsmake way for methods by which scientific truths are formulated.A comprehensive value-neutral science must divest itself, asGeorge A. Lundberg has urged, 25 of \"the luxury of indignation,\"\"personalistic and moralistic interpretations,\" and \"deeply cher-ished ideologies resembling in form if not in content theirtheological predecessors.\" It must disregard \"the goals of striving\"and, instead, suggest alternatives, state their implications, anddevelop the most efficient \"method of achieving whatever endsmen want. . . .\" Science is not concerned with what, at least inone sense, are ends. These society sets by any procedure it chooses.

254 Scientism and ValuesScience, however, cannot sanction every procedure which a societymight employ: some of them will not aid the realization of ends.The proper procedures, the only ones which guarantee the suc-cessful operation and the effective functioning of society, are thosewhich reject the possibility that a value-impregnated expressionof an individual may conceivably be true independently of hisinterests. In accordance with its commitment to a phenomenal—reality and its attendant discrimination against other realms of—reality science must reduce, or repudiate as myth, the beliefthat ends may be ontological, that values may transcend indivi-dual desires. It therefore recognizes (1) that the end for man is—quite literally his end his death, and (2) that the end for scienceis the assuring of survival, the maintaining of the social andindividual equilibrium. Hence, the purpose of science is to keepeverything endlessly moving. Its credentials are furnished by itspower to make society survive; and as society is in fact kept for-— —ever on the move without hitches, deviations, or back talk itscredentials are authenticated. 5. A drive to fuss ever more intimately with the individualperson so that social science may achieve its end. Having dis-covered that at the core of man is an abhorrible void, unfulfilledbut crying for fulfillment, social scientists are likely to work onthat state toward which man's true will aspires. Such work effectsa transformation within man himself. Karl Mannheim has elabo-rated on this:Functionalism made its first appearance in the field of the naturalsciences, and could be described as the technical point of view. Ithas only recently been transferred to the social sphere. . . . Once this technical approach was transferred from the naturalsciences to human affairs, it was bound to bring about a profoundchange in man himself. . . . The functional approach no longerregards ideas and moral standards as absolute values, but as productsof the social process which can, if necessary, be changed by scientificguidance combined with political practice. . . . The extension of this doctrine of technical supremacy which I haveadvocated in this book as one of several approaches to society is inmy opinion inevitable. . . .

Social Science As Autonomous Activity 255 Progress in the technique of organization is nothing but the appli-Acation of technical conceptions to the forms of co-operation. humanbeing, regarded as part of the social machine, is to a certain extentstabilized in his reactions by training and education, and all hisrecently acquired activities are co-ordinated according to a definiteprinciple of efficiency within an organized framework. 26 In accordance with this new regard for human beings, man mustbe appropriately energized and directed. Being a pliable creature,he must be sufficiently softened and compressed to fit into thosecompartments which might be readily supervised. Within them,he can be guided to lead a secure and satisfying life. This is bestdone by quieting his prejudices, straightening out his complica-tions, and exposing the irrationality of his diversions. The ex-peditors of history must trim and neutralize him, eliminatingthose of his motives which may set him to doing the impractical,frivolous, perilous, or unexpected. They must allow him to ex-perience the positive harm of having his fling, telling his joke,or sitting the next one out. His environment must be so arrangedas to make him comfortable. He must be fitted so that he willbecome the self-renouncing creature he naturally is. Pains mustbe taken to relieve him of the agony of choice between alterna-tives, relieve him of that perplexing inner conflict which jeop-ardizes every civil order. Those whose calling it is to assume total responsibility for the—whole of man the elite whose historical function it is to termi-—nate history must purposefully intervene, varying one factorhere, another one there, moving man by affecting his behavior,driving him by harnessing his drives, watching always whetherhis motions and emotions tend more and more to conform to theplotted ideal, whether the myths calculated to galvanize him willinduce him to behave as expected, to make his industry correspondto his true interest. Fortunately, it is never necessary to tamper with man's true—will only with the will's objectively pathological aberrations,with those human urgings which prompt the individual to con-ceive of himself as selfishly subjective. Only the deviant, not the

256 Scientism and Valuesnorm, need be imposed upon, and hence the elite's tax on non-conformity is justified. Its claim to power is legitimate since, tothe extent that it is an elite in the service of social science, it willleave normal men alone. As Tocqueville perceived, such rational leadership is pene-trating, but soothing. It is extensive, but gentle. It slowly breeds—a contented mass of men a mass untroubled by the derangementswhich spring from the reverberations of the playful imaginationand free from that irreducible mystery of spirit upon which man,when self-deceived, bases his dignity.Above this race of men [Tocqueville concluded in his second volumeon democracy in America] stands an immense and tutelary power,which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications, and towatch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provi-dent, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent, if, like thatauthority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks,on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well con-tent that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothingbut rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors,but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happi-ness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessi-ties, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns,directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and sub-—divides their inheritances what remains, but to spare them all thecare of thinking and all the trouble of living? VI It should be emphasized that those whose work has been herereflected on would vigorously repudiate the regime projected byTocqueville. The grounds for this repudiation, namely, the goodmotives and worthy interests of social scientists, have not, of course,been the subject of this analysis, one which has been concernedinstead with some of their assumptions. And these assumptions,to be fully explicit, make for a state which cannot claim to belegitimate. Although the multiplicity of existing appeals to a just

Social Science As Autonomous A ctivity 257order may make it appear impossible to judge any particularone as legitimate, it might, nevertheless, be suggested that thesevery claims imply that a normative order transcends the existingone. The denial of the reality of such transcending objectives,whether or not incorporated in a method for understandingsociety, cannot stand when it is tied to the belief that some specificorder truly constitutes the incarnation of justice. Although this is precisely the underlying postulate of part ofthe work of current social science, its authors have not simplypointed to part of reality and called it good. Yet, even when theyhave refused to point, the perspective embodied within theirresearch has acted as a pointer for them. While they have not ad-vocated an amoral power state, they have labored so as to produceone by systematically eliminating any rational alternative. They—have effectually cancelled unrealized human ideals except, ofcourse, when they have found them to be operative, to be real,to be other than ideal. Postulating a state within which all alter-natives are unified, within which all ideals are one, they havemade the ideal and the real synonymous. They have charged theirmethods to eliminate all tension between experience and aspira-tion, between fact and value. Yet once they have dispelled thistension, the very notion of justice must become irrelevant. Oncethey have encouraged existing conditions and normative standardsto blend, the very pursuit of knowledge must become an irrationalendeavor. Once they have dismissed value systems providing termsby which troubled individuals might assess moving events, his-torical states, and political action, man's claim to make meaningfuldistinctions, ascribe values, and exercise his reason must becomeimpertinent. —That they have not been successful in their quest and whowould doubt the significance of their own contributions to a—pluralistic liberal society? is due to a lack of consistency, to asentimentality which reflects, perhaps, either the afterglow of anolder tradition or some pressing humanistic interest quietlybidding for recognition. 27 Their respect for the individual doesnot arise from the assumptions basic to their methods of inquiry.

258 Scientism and ValuesWhen these, rather than their generous sentiments, are followedthrough, there emerges a model indifferent to justice, indifferentto that indefinable human uniqueness that still makes it reason-able to speak of man's moral freedom and obliges us to keep theinstitution of politics in good repair.NOTES 1. See Bernard Barber, Science and the Social Order (Glencoe: Free Press, 1952), p. 244. Note especially Roy R. Grinker, ed., Toward a Unified Theory of Human Behavior (New York: Basic Books, 1956); James G. Miller, \"Toward a General Theory for the Behavioral Sciences,\" in Leonard D. White, ed., The State of the Social Sciences (Chicago: Uni- versity of Chicago Press, 1956), pp. 29-65; and essays by Richard C. Snyder, Marion J. Levy, and Talcott Parsons in Roland Young, ed., Approaches to the Study of Politics (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1958). 2. \"Our bias centers in the subject-predicate bifurcation of our sentence structure, a division which prevents us from formulating a proposition without a substantive either stated or implied, and which compels us to separate the substantive from the verb. . . .\" (Laura Thompson, \"In Quest of an Heuristic Approach to the Study of Mankind,\" Philosophy of Science, XIII [January, 1946], 53-66, 54.) 3. Galileo, \"II Saggiatore,\" Opere, 180, p. 232; quoted in R. G. Colling- wood, The Idea of Nature (Oxford: Clarendon, 1945), p. 102. 4. In John Gillin, ed., For a Science of Social Man (New York: Macmillan, 1954), pp. 41-42, 44. 5. David Easton, The Political System (New York: Knopf, 1953), p. 289. 6. Theodore M. Newcomb, \"Sociology and Psychology,\" in Gillin, ed., op. cit., pp. 227-256, p. 241. 7. See Hannah Arendt, \"Religion and Politics,\" Confluence, II (September, 1953), 105-126; Arendt also notes the blurring of distinctions resulting from the analysis of Communism as a religion. 8. For a sophisticated discussion of the procedural conventions for deter- mining the correctness of a decision to accept a proposition as part of scientific knowledge, see Felix Kaufmann, Methodology of the Social Sciences (New York: Oxford University Press, 1944). 9. This definition is from the appendix of Marion J. Levy, Jr., \"Some Aspects of 'Structural-Functional' Analysis and Political Science,\" in Young, ed., op. cit., pp. 52-66.10. For an illustration, see R. K. Morton, Social Theory and Social Structure (Glencoe: Free Press, 1949), pp. 79-80.11. See Edwin II. Sutherland, \"Social Pathology,\" American Journal of Sociology, L (May, 1945), 429-435, 431.12. Harvard University Commission to Advise on the Future of Psychology

Social Science As Autonomous Activity 259 at Harvard, Alan Gregg, chairman, The Place of Psychology in an Ideal University (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1947), p. 2.13. Harold D. Lasswell, \"The Policy Orientation,\" in Daniel Lerner and Harold D. Lasswell, eds., The Policy Sciences: Recent Developments in Science and Method (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1951), pp. 3-15, p. 3.14. Gillin, loc. cit., p. 6. See also John Gillin, \"Methods of Approach to the Study of Human Behavior,\" in F. L. K. Hsu, ed., Aspects of Culture and Personality (New York: Abelard-Schuman, 1954), pp. 3-18.15. \"The Forward View,\" in Gillin, ed., op. cit., pp. 257-276, p. 276.16. In Louis Wirth, ed., Eleven Twenty-Six: A Decade of Social Science Research (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949), pp. 133-134.17. Yet note the reservations about the presumption of good will as ex- pressed in Arnold M. Rose, Theory and Method in the Social Sciences (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1954), pp. 184-188.18. Harold D. Lasswell, \"Current Studies of the Decision Process: Auto- mation versus Creativity,\" Western Political Quarterly, VIII (September, 1955), 381-399, 385, 386.19. Cf. Morris R. Cohen's conclusion that \"despite some amateurish phi- losophizing on the part of some physicists or biologists when they take a vacation from the field of their special competence, the fact is that natural science is never satisfied with empirical statistical correlation but ever seeks to formulate universal laws. . . .\" (\"Causation and Its Applica- tion to History,\" Journal of the History of Ideas, III [January, 1942], 12-29, 18).20. Christian Realism and Political Problems (New York: Scribner's, 1953), p. 83.21. See, for example, Anatol Rapoport, Science and the Goals of Man (New York: Harper, 1950).22. Ernest Greenwood, Experimental Sociology: A Study in Method (New York: King's Crown Press, 1945), p. 78.23. A conclusion as extreme as this is suggested by Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952), chap. 4. Few have been as explicit on this point as Laura Thompson (loc. cit., pp. 55, 59-60). She maintains that not until social science has re-evaluated its premises in the \"light of the new vision of science\" and brought its \"methods into line with new operational concepts, will a fundamental integration of the sciences of mankind emerge which may place in the hands of man a key to his own salvation.\" She concludes that, adopting the proper method, social science can help produce an ideal state by revealing what \"nature-culture-personality structures\" are conducive to it and by answering, among other questions, \"How may those that do not fit tailor themselves or be tailored to a new and adequate design?\"24. In Lerner and Lasswell, op. cit., p. 12.25. \"The Future of the Social Sciences,\" Scientific Monthly, LIII (October, 1941), 346-359, 240-244.26. Karl Mannheim, Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1951), pp. 240-244.MMHHhh

260 Scientism and Values27. This may be illustrated by William Foote Whyte's Pattern for Industrial Peace (New York: Harper, 1951), an account of the relations of Inland Steel Container Company's Chicago plant with its union local of the United Steelworkers of America. Whyte says (pp. vii, 158) that the purpose of his report was \"to discover general principles of human rela- tions that might be applied to other cases, that might enable us to predict and control behavior.\" Yet, interestingly enough, his account somehow succeeds in enriching and enlarging sympathies for men as autonomous ends, suggesting that Whyte was less the single-minded be- haviorist than he supposes. Apparently he permitted purposes other than his professed one to select and shape his material: he notes (p. 159), for example, that he \"would like people to read this book.\" The desire to be read, to partake in human discourse, must have called for inclusion of many a nonscientific symbol, making his work valuable and significant in a sense other than intended.

Index of AuthorsACKERKNECHT, E. H., 216 Burckhardt, Jacob, 242Adler, Franz, 142 Burgess, Ernest W., 102, 105Anderson, Nels, 104, 117 Burke, Kenneth, 94, 99Antigone, 34 f., 37, 39 f., 46Aquinas, Thomas, 22 Caldwell, Joseph R., 143Arendt, Hannah, 240, 258 Cameron, Merton K., 99Aristotle, 22, 28, 42, 52, 69, 80, 172 Campbell, A. A., 142Ayer, A. J., 48 Carr, E. H., 103Bacon, Francis, 202, 216 Carter, G. S., 70 ff., 77 f., 82Bacon, Friar Roger, 179 Case, Clarence M., 98Barber, Bernard, 258 Cervantes, Lucius F., 140Barker, R. G., 201 Chapin, F. Stuart, 99Barnett, H. G., 107, 109 Churchill, Sir Winston, 139Barzun, Jacques, xv Cohen, Morris R., 41 f., 48, 259Becker, Carl, 1 57 Collingwood, R. G., 258Bendix, R., 233 Comte, Auguste, 117, 148 f., 152, 202,Benedict, Ruth, 11, 30 ff., 48, 59, 233, 212, 215 f., 221 242 Condorcet, Marquis de, 205 Coon, Carleton S., 64 ff., 74, 77 ff., 81,Bennett, John W., 107 f., 114 109 f.Berkeley, George, 24 f., 47 Copernicus, 10, 24 f., 28, 47, 179Berlin, Isaiah, 152, 158 Couch, W. T., xivBertalanffy, Ludwig von, 81, 185, 201, Count, E. W., 79 216 f. Creon, 34 f., 37, 39 f., 46Bindra, D., 217Boell, E. J., 201 Crocker, E. C, 142Boggs, M. M., 142 Cronin, Morton, 115 Crover, D. W., 142Bonner, J. T., 185, 200Boulding, Kenneth E., 212, 217, 233 Darius, 36, 149Bowley, Marian, 178 Darwin, Charles, 63, 149 Democritus, 203Boyd, William C, xvi Descartes, 22, 24 f., 28, 40, 47 Dewey, John, 47Bradley, F. H., 41 Djilas, Milovan, 117Braun, W., 183, 200 Donne, John, 27, 47Breckenridge, M. E., 198, 200 Dunham, H. Warren, 99Brennan, Robert Edward, 177 Easton, David, 239Bronk, D. W., 216Buckle, Henry T., 149Bunzel, Ruth, 58 261r ,<WiW-f

262 Index of AuthorsEberhard, Wolfram, 117 Inhelder, B., 217Einstein, Albert, 2Emmett, Dorothy, 25 James, William, 40 f., 69Erikson, Kai T., xv Joyce, George H., 99Eteocles, 34Etzioni, Amitai, 143 Kant, Immanuel, 22, 25, 33, 73, 80 Kaufman, Felix, 258Finch, Henry A., 48, 99 Kepler, J., 203, 210 Keynes, John Maynard, xiFortune, R., 58 Kierkegaard, Soren, 22Fourier, Charles, 122, 130Fox, Byron L., 103 Kinsey, Alfred C, 8, 218Freud, Sigmund, 51, 57Frisch, Karl von, x, 128, 131 Klineberg, Otto, 102, 111 Kohr, Leopold, 122, 124, 140Fromm, Erich, 54 Kroeber, Alfred L., x, xv, 54, 82, 107Galbraith, John, 121, 125 Krutch, Joseph Wood, 121Galileo, 3, 10, 24 f., 28, 41, 47, 57, 142, Lafitte, Paul, 79 172, 209, 237, 258 Langford, William S., 140Geyl, Pieter, 154, 157 f. LaPiere, Richard T., 131, 140Gillin, John, 110, 118, 243, 258 f. Larson, Arthur, 141Glass, Bentley, 107 Laski, Harold J., 139, 143Green, Arnold W., 116 Lasswell, Harold D., 243, 246, 253, 259Greenwood, Ernest, 259Gregg, Alan, 259 Lawrence, D. H, 59Grimm, Heinz, 141 Lazarsfeld, P. I., 216 Lazerouitz, Morris, 48Hacker, F. J., 217 Leibell, J. F., 177 f.Hallowell, A. Irving, 63, 67, 81 Lenin, N. V., 151Hammerstein, Oscar, 126 Levy, Marion J., 258Harmon, Francis L., 177 Lewis, C. L., 178, 181Harwood, E. C, 142, 172, 179 Linton, Ralph, 54, 57, 80Hassett, Joseph D., 177 f. Lippmann, Walter, 143Hayek, F. A., 55, 86, 98, 178, 202, Lipset, S. M., 233 Llavero, F., 217 205 f., 210, 212, 216 f., 221, 233 Lorenz, Konrad, xiiHegel, 22, 148 f. Lucretius, 203Hemingway, E., 59 Lundberg, George A., 94, 99, 112, 253Henle, Paul, 77, 82Herodotus, 36 f., 47, 219 f. McGranahan, Donald V., 102 f.Hobbes, Thomas, 55, 249 Machlup, Fritz, xi, xvHobbs, A. H, 93, 99, 177 Maclver, Robert M., 44 f.Hoebel, E. Adamson, 109 Malinowski, B., 54Hoffer, E., 212, 217Holton, Gerald, xv Mannheim, Karl, 254Hughes, B. O., 188, 191 f., 197, 200 f. Margenau, Henry, 140Hume, David, 22, 25 ff., 33, 55, 57, 80 Maslow, Abraham, 56, 80, 217 f.Huxley, Aldous, 81 , 99, 21 3, 21 5 f., 233 Marx, Karl, 122, 130 May, Mark A., 243Huxley, T. H, 81,99 Mayman, M., 217 Mead, Margaret, 58, 129, 140Ighheiser, Gustav, 113 ^

Index of Authors 263Mechem, E., 200 Radgliffe-Brown, A. R., 54, 63, 80Meerloo, J. A. M., 217 Rapaport, Anatol, 217, 259 Redfield, Robert, 56, 60 f., 80 f.Meier, Richard L., 140, 178 Riesman, David, 109, 209, 211, 214,Menninger, K., 217 f.Merrill, Francis E., 97, 99 217Merton, Robert K., 136, 140, 258 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 130, 163Mill, John Stuart, 178 Rose, Arnold M., 99, 259Millard, C. V., 193, 200 Rothbard, Murray, 177 f.Mises, Ludwig von, 170, 172, 177 f. Royce, Joseph R., xvMitchell, Robert A., 177 f. Russell, Bertrand, 47, 165Monan, J. Donald, 177 f.Monod, J., 201 Sahagun, Friar Bernardino de, 55, 80Monroe, Ruth L., 53 f., 80 St. Augustine, 22, 148 Saint-Simon, Comte de, 202, 215, 221Montaigne, M. E. de, 27 f., 80 Scheler, Max, xivMoon, Parker Thomas, 179 Schlick, M., 202 Schumpeter, Joseph A., 44, 179Moore, G. E., 26 Sheppard, D., 142Myrdal, Gunnar, 45 f., 48 f. Shils, Edward A., 48, 99 Sholl, D. A., 183, 201Nadel, S. F., 63, 81 Shuey, Audrey M., IllNagel, Ernest, 41 f., 48, 82 Simpson, George, 116Nash, L. K., 194, 201 Smith, Adam, 175, 179 f.Neumeyer, Martin, 94, 96, 99 Smith, Elliot, 54Newcomb, Theodore M., 239 f. Smith, M. Brewster, 238Newton, Isaac, 10, 24, 28, 47, 57 Sophocles, 35, 47Niebuhr, Reinhold, 246 Sorokin, Pitirim, 146, 152 f. Spengler, Oswald, 146, 209 ff., 214,Nietzsche, 59, 211, 241, 251Nimkoff, Meyer, 117 217, 242 Standen, Anthony, 179Oberndorf, C. P., 114 f., 117 Steward, Julian, 107 f.Ogburn, William F., 117 Strausz-Hupe, R., 178Olson, W. C, 187 ff., 192 ff., 197 f., 201 Sullivan, J. C, 54, 201Opler, M. K., 217 Sutherland, Edwin H., 258Ortega y Gasset, J., 211, 217Orwell, George, 213Packard, H. O., 216 Taine, H., 149 f., 152Packard, Vance, 122 Tanner, J. H., 217 Tappan, Paul W., 99Pareto, Vilfredo, 221 Tawney, R. H., 153Parkinson, D. Northcote, 233 Tax, Sol, 143Parsons, Talcott, 48, 116, 258 Temple, William, 47Penrose, Edith Til ton, 170, 179 Thielens, W., 216 Thilly, Frank, 177 f.Perry, Ralph Barton, 33 Thompson, G. G., 193Phillips, R. P., 177 f. Thompson, Laura, 258 f.Plato, 22, 42, 69, 80, 130 Thurnwald, Hilde, 124Polanyi, Michael, xv, 133 Thurnwald, Richard, 58, 117Polyneices, 34 f., 39 Thrupp, Sylvia, xivPopper, K. R., 136 Tilgner, D. J., 141 f.Possony, Stefan T., 233Price-Williams, D. R., 141

264 Index of AuthorsTocqueville, Alexis de, 256 Werkmeister, W. H., 156, 201Tolman, E., 53Toohey, John J., 177 f. White, Leonard D., 179, 258Toynbee, Arnold, 146, 152 ff., 210 f., Whitehead, Alfred North, 25, 28, 41, 48 Whorf, Benjamin, 204 217 Whyte, William Foote, 260Tsilikis, John D., 143Tugwell, Rex, 165 Whyte, W. H., 121,211,217Van Melsen, Andrew G., 177 ff. Wilberforce, Bishop, 81 Wilde, Oscar, 57Veblen, Thorstein, 80Vincent, E. L., 198, 200 Williams, Roger J., 142Viner, Jacob, xi, xvi Wirth, Louis, 113,259Vivas, Eliseo, 156 Wright, H. F., 201Voegelin, Eric, 259 Wrightstone, J. W., 201Wagner, Kurt G., 141 Yeager, Leland B., 142, 179, 233Wall, W. D., Ill Young, Roland, 258Weber, Max, 8, 38 f., 97, 99, 173, 242 Zimmerman, Carle C., 120, 140

Index of Subjectsacademic freedom, 209 Brave New World, 213, 215advertising, 121 ff., 140, 213 bureaucrat, 129 case against, 123 f.age causation, 9 f., 223 change chronological, 1 88 ff. organismic, 188 cultural, 94aggression, xiv optimum, 94American Assembly, 131, 141 speed of, 94American high school family, 120 chemistAmerican society sensory competence among, 141 ff. as a system, 132 and sensory methodology, 1 40 ff.anatomy and value judgments, 133 ff. comparative, 129 chemistyanthropologist, 58 food, 133 ff. physical, 110 and subjective experiences, 1 33 ff.anthropology, 50 and value judgments, 1 33 ff. physical, xvi childanthropomorphic concepts, 203 permissive treatment of, 198Antigone, 34 ff. psychology, 1 86 ff.appeasement, 44 the whole, 187 ff.archaeologist, xiii collectivism, 212archaeology, xiii, 143 commitmentartifacts, 136 f. egalitarian, 117attitudes to valuations, 1 6 ff. measurement of, xiv, 130 to value judgments, 133 ff.autocataly tic theory, 1 84 common good, 168behavioral sciences, 50, 100, 137 ff. communism, 139, 150, 234behaviorism, 225 leaders of, 227behaviorists, 51 conditioned reflex, 225 value positions of, 105 ff. methods of, 121bias, melioristic, 93 configuration, 143biochemical individuality, 142 congruity v. incongruity, 128 ff.biology, 56 consciousness, 168 growth in, 181 ff. individual, 170blood donors, 121 -introspection, 225 ff.brainwashing, 212 control, 251 convergence, 186 resistance to, 1 92 f. 265

266 Index of Subjectscosts, administrative, 175 extrapolation, 246Counter- Revolution of Science, 221 biological, 64 cultural evolution, 64criteria facts, 143, 155 f., 240 f. of cognition, 137 ff. defined, 40, 42 f. of color, form, texture, 1 37 historical, 155cultural relativism, 29 ff., 164 true and pseudo, 1 56 and free will, 164 uncertainty of, 156culture-bound categories, 204customs, relativity of, 30 ff. factual reality, 240 f. freedom, 234Decline of the West, 209 ff.democracy, 131, 232 defined, 229 ff.determinism, 161 ff. a matter of, 229 f. quality of, 229 environmental, x French Revolution, 205development Freudian Ethic, 131 friction, 167 potentialities of human, 1 89 frustration, theory of, xiv functionalism, 254 as ultimate goal, 102 ff.dictatorship, 232 Gemeinschaft-Gesellschaft dichot-displacement, resistance to, 1 89, 1 92 f. omies, 121dysfunctional, 241, 250 genocide, 213ecology, xiii, 72economic system German General Staff, 132 and intrinsic human values, 123 ff. going togetherness, 1 90 f. Gestalt socialist, 137economics, mathematical, xii, 11 psychology, 53education theory, 238 governmental power, 1 26 ff. American, 206 gravity, center of, 191 f. developmental theory in, 186, 193 ff. Great Depression, 163 growth in biology and, 181 ff. Greek polis, 130egalitarianism, 137, 139 group dynamics, 126 ff.elasticity, 167 growing together, 230emergence, 76 f. growthenergetic imperative, 206 allometric, 185enthymeme, 96 in biology and education, 181 ff.environmental factors, 190 educational, 186 ff.equality, 105 f., 131, 174 f. law of, 185 appeal for, 46 limited predictive powers of, 185equilibrium, 167, 236 mental, 190equity, 174 of mental attributes, 187 ff.ethics, 160 pattern of, 189 ff. pseudo, 131 quantitative aspects of, 1 82evolution, theory of, 63 ff.experience haematologist, 137 aesthclical element of, 227 haematology, 142 nature of, 76 f. happiness, 256experimental approach, 246 hidden persuasion, 121 ff., 206, 212experiments, 2 laboratory, 171

Index of Subjects 267historical process, 146 f. liberal-democratic institutions, 247historicism, 210 limnology, xiiihistoriography, 220history linguistics, xiii defined, 147 f. Lloyd's of London, 132 materialistic conception of, 151 lost community method of, 210 philosophies of, 148 crypto-quantitative comparison, 130 theme of the, 1 30human action, 171, 176human behavior, explanation of, 10 market economy, 1 69human dignity and the case against ad- Marxism, 151 materialism, 125 f. vertising, 1 23 f. mathematicalhuman engineering, 206 approach, 184human nature, ix, 26 f., 248 logic, 204 relations, 1 66 f. coerced conditioning, 127 mathematician, 137 ignored, 127 f. measurement, III, 166 of political behavior, 226 ff.human objectives, 236, 244 menticide, 213 metaphors, 167, 179 functionalization of, 244 ff. methods, 156 axiomatic-deductive, 172human relations, 123 ff. of comparison, 230 mathematical, 166 f. quality of, 124 ff. of the natural sciences, 227 f. pseudomathematical, xiihuman varieties, differences between, scientific, 57, 222 sensory, 140 ff. 108 f. methodology of the natural sciences,humanities, link between social sciences 221 and, 220 f. migration, 143, 234I.Q., 187 of man, 139ideographic, 210 minority groups, 106 ff., 138improbability, principle of, 112incongruity, historical, 130 hospitals for, 41 1 f.India, 224 model, 210individual differences, 196insurance schemes, voluntarily chosen, nature of, 1 96 f. neutral, 239 141 of social science, 252intergroup relations, 126 ff. verification of in science, 211 model-building, 166 mixed neighborhoods in city moralism, 235 planning, 126 morphology approach, xiiiInternational Historical Congress, 1 50 f. approach to reality, 128 f. myth, 45juvenile delinquency, 214 nations, old, 169Kinsey report, 8, 217 natural childbirth fad, 129knowledge naturalism, 73 ff. complete, 247 manipulative, 245 ff.laboratory situations, 246lacunae, relevant, 120language, 237, 252 syntax of Indo-Germanic, 204

268 Index of Subjectsnature and nurture, 189 positivism, 202 ff. positivists, 42neopositivism, IIneutrality, ethical, 8 and scientific research, 202 ff. power, 256New Deal, 165 f. power state, 257nihilism, 211, 214 amoral as result of social science, 257 praxeology, 160, 172objectivity, 8 f., 60, 97, 100 prediction, 62 defined, 22 ff. prejudice, 33 in exploration of social phenomena, privacy, 125 220 idea of, 48 propaganda, responsiveness of human pseudo-, 32 f. beings, 1 27 f.objects, status of, 24 ff. propheciesobservation self-defeating, 136 emphasis on, 128 ff. self-fulfilling, 136 predicates, 203olfactory sense, 1 34 Prophets of Doom, 1 52oratory, deliberative, 94 ff.organismic protoplasm, 182 age curve, 195 psychoanalyst, 57 analogies, 168, 210 ff. psychological engineering, 206 fallacy, 169 psychology, 240organization man, 206Organizational Revolution, 212 modern, 238 efficiency of, 229 public good, 168origins of man, 64 ff.other-directedness, 214 qualitative judgment, 1 35parameters, 184 quantification, 51 f.Parkinson's Law, 226pathologist, 137 race, concept of, 106 ff.pejorative terms, xiii rational leadership, 256perspectivism, 204 readiness, 192pessimism, 146 ff.philosophy, moral, 52, 136 Red China, 139, 224physicalism, 202physical science, position of, 28 f. Vreform, social,physics, 204policy religions, pseudo, 215 f. research an empirical science, 253 formulation of, 253 antibiotics, 136policy decisions, basis for, 135 choice of priority in, 119 f.policy sciences, 135 priority in, 140political behavior, measured, 226 ff. standards of, 7 ff.political .succession, 137 resentment, 1 27 f.politically impossible, 131 as basis of sociology, 116politics, 122 f. rhetoric and methods of hidden persuasion, of complexity, 141 defined, 84 f. 122 f. and science, 85 science bureaucratization of, 209 constructs of, 248 difference between, and studies of man, 52 -

. Index of Subjects 269science (Cont.) scientistic credo, 206 levelling in, 208 attitude, consequences of, 207 organization in, 208 f. organization of, 243 f. Selbstentfremdung des Menschen, 122 purpose of, 254 sensory of quantities, 204 a symbolic system, 203 analysis of nutrients, 141 f. system of, 3 ff. deprivation, 214 perceptions, 133 ff. and values, 173 role of in knowledge, 27 ff. servomechanism, 165 f.scientific simplification, 222 f. analysis, 112 social action, tactical maneuvers of, aspects of man, 55 ff. 116 data, 59 experience, 203 social conflict, 249 method, 57 social controls, 1 26 ff. preciseness, 91 social engineering, 165 f. quest for knowledge, 114 social engineers, 252 ff. terminology, 154 treatment, 55 ff. their goal defined, 254 f.scientific concepts social health, 244 application of, to humans, 199 f. social order, 235 criteria for, 199 f.scientific pretension screens the power rational, 34 social problems, 89, 94, 228 urge, 223 social reality, indicative lacunae in,scientism, 55 f. 120 f. basic defect of, 215 f. social reformers, 125 ff. characterized by three basic con- perfectionism of, 125 ff. cepts : objectivism, collectivism, social sciences, 250 ff. historicism, 205 dangers of, 151 ff. amoral power state as result of, 257 defined, ixff., xiv, 1, 128 ff., 147, 159 concepts in, 1 06 ff. data of, 226 in the economic market, 122 ff. potency of the models of, 252 effects of, 157, 250 ff. and social action, 250 ff. in history, 147 ff. implicit assumptions, 171 unification of, 251 f. inroads in field of politics, 223 ff. value of, 5 key to, 165 and language, VII, 93 social scientists and left-wingers, 152 and the natural, social, and moral bias of, 22 ff., 32 ff. effects of, xiii, 46 sciences, 128 ff. fiduciary responsibility of, 100 and progressing statism, 211 ff. and justice, 29, 45 as a religion, xv the limits to their action, 251 f. vs. science, 159 ff. and the natural sciences, 220 ff. and statistics, 1 52 ff. and objectivity, 43 ff. where it occurs, 1 9 ff power in society of, 43 ff. in the writing of history, 1 44 ff. as propagandists, 109scientist, neutral, 100 and values, 12 vision of, 249 social security schemes, 131, 141 social stratification, 139 society affluent, 123 ff.

6270 Index of Subjectssociety (Cont.) terms (Cont.) positive, 88 analytical model of concrete, 241 capitalistic, 139 Third Reich, 139 concept of, 131 ff., 163 totalitarianism, 223 concept and reality, 16 ff. conception of, 96 f. underdeveloped countries, 224 good, 129 neutral model of, 239 underprivileged, 89 as an organism, 168 unfolding design, 189 organismic concept of, 129 unrealizable world, concern with, stable, 17 239 ff.sociologists unscholarly, 1 34 f. unscientific, xii, 1 34 f. oratory of, 94 ff. scientistic, 85 ff. to apply methods of the natural sci-sociology ences categorically to the fields of concept of asymmetry in, 140 sociology, economics, and politics,Soviet Russia, 104, 129 227 f. and all-out advertising, 123 f. historians, 151 urban quality, 137 historiography, 151 Use and Abuse of History, 148 ff.standards, absolute, 1 98 ff. valuesStatement of Human Rights, 107 ff. clusters, 1statistics, 8 commitments, 12, 101 ff., 114 used by historians, 1 53 judgments, 58 ff., 139, 173Study of History, 1 53 ff. and the person, 1 3 f.subjectivity and objectivity, 25 ff. problem of, 4subliminal motivation, 212 for science, 7system in science, 6 theory of, 1 3 ff. concept of, 131 ff. value-free, 101 collectivistic, 139 variable, concept of, 167 theory of a specific, 1 32 Vienna Circle, 202sympathy, 126 Vitality of Western Civilization, 144 ff.taxation, 175 Wertfreiheit, 173technology, 207teleology, 81 wisdom of the body idea, 198terms Wissenschaft, II ff. dialectical, 88 world crisis, defined, 228 ff. world society, 229 f.

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