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Scientific Method and Social Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Joseph Mayer
Joseph Mayer*
Affiliation:
Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.
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Extract

If there is an essential difference as suggested in a preceding article, between the natural sciences on the one hand and the social studies on the other, in the sense that man has the power to change, and has repeatedly changed, existing social organizations, whereas he has no such power over natural phenomena, the meaning of social science must in this respect at least differ substantially from that of natural science. Elsewhere the present writer has designated society an “artificial creation,” much as the automobile or a steel mill is, i.e. made by the artifice of man. The artificial automobile or steel mill is of course fabricated in the light of the natural laws of physical science. Its construction would be impossible without a knowledge of these laws. There are also certain natural laws and tendencies in human nature and animal behavior which must serve as a foundation for any scientifically fabricated society, i.e. constructed on the basis of observation and verification of these tendencies on the one hand and a rigorous use of theory and analysis on the other. In short, despite any essential difference, as suggested, between natural and social science, the scientific method is apparently just as applicable in the one field as in the other. There is still much confusion on this score. But before pursuing further the significance of the distinction, artificial versus natural, it will be well to have before us more of what opposing schools of methodological thought in the social studies have to offer.

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Type
Research Article
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Philosophy of Science , Volume 1 , Issue 3 , July 1934, pp. 338 - 350
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association 1934

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References

1. Joseph Mayer, “Toward a Science of Society”, The American Journal of Sociology, September, 1933, pp. 176–177.

2. Joseph Mayer, “The Seven Seals of Science”, The Century Co., New York, 1927, pp. 424 ff. Cf., also, Lester F. Ward, “Dynamic Sociology”, D. Appleton & Co., New York, 1883, vol. i, pp. 71–81, 490–493, vol. ii, pp. 103–106; “The Psychic Factors of Civilization”, Ginn & Co., Boston, 1893, pp. 286–7; “Applied Sociology”, Ginn & Co., Boston, 1906, pp. 11—12, etc. One need not agree with Ward's view of teleology or psychology (which in his day were very crudely conceived) to appreciate the distinctions he drew between natural and artificial in the foregoing references and elsewhere.

3. Cf. Chas. A. Ellwood, “Methods in Sociology”, Duke University Press, Durham, 1933; Pitirim Sorokin, “Contemporary Sociological Theories”, Harpers, New York, 1928.

4. Sorokin, op. cit., Intro., chs. I, IV, etc.

5. Cf. Ellwood, op. cit., introduction and first four chapters, especially pages 31–45.

6. Ibid.; also, Sorokin, op. cit.

7. Ellsworth Faris, Review of Ellwood's “Methods in Sociology”, The American Journal of Sociology, March, 1934, pp. 686–689.

8. Mayer, “Seven Seals of Science”, pp. 13–14, 31–33, 98–106, 201–209.

9. Cf. Ellwood, op. cit., chs. II & V; also, Morris R. Cohen, “Reason and Nature”, Harcourt, Bruce & Co., New York, 1931, pp. 333–368; Chas. H. Cooley, “Life and the Student”, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1927, pp. 150–158.

10. Cf. Ellwood, op. cit., ch. IV.

11. Cf. Faris, op. cit., p. 689.

12. Cf. Arthur O. Lovejoy, “The Revolt Against Dualism”, Open Court Publishing Co., United States, 1930.

13. Cf. Ellwood, op. cit., pp. 28 ff.; also, Faris, op. cit., p. 688.

14. Mayer, “Seven Seals of Science”, pp. 207–210. For further details regarding the significance and importance of introspective- or self-observation, see works of E. B. Titchener; also additional references given on pages 718–719 of “Methods in Social Science”, edited by Stuart A. Rice, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1931. Certain “modern” behaviorists, who attempt to drag introspection through the window after it has been so roundly kicked out the front door, are now designating introspection as reflective or symbolic “behavior”, adding that they see no objection to introspective- or self-observation so long as knowledge gained thereby is duly verified and checked by other self-observers,—a point on which there has never been any question. The real question has to do with the attempt to add “behaviorless” behavior of a reflective or symbolic sort to honest-to-goodness behavior and expect to retain the dogmas of behaviorism intact. Under the expanded concept, an organism is apparently never “not behaving”; and so the “moderns”, in their return to Wundt and his followers, seem not only to have taken the “ism” out of behaviorism (an avowed intention) but to have taken out “behavior” as well. Cf. John F. Markey, “Trends in Social Psychology”, in Trends in American Sociology, edited by Lundberg, Anderson, Bain, et. al., Harpers, 1929, pp. 135–148; J. F. Dashiell, “A Physiological-Behavioristic Description of Thinking”, Psychological Review, 1925, pp. 54–73; K. S. Lashley, “The Behavioristic Interpretation of Consciousness”, Psychological Review, 1923, pp. 237–272, 329–353; A. P. Weiss, “A Theoretical Basis of Human Behavior”, R. G. Adams & Co., Columbus, 1925, pp. 234 ff.

15. For the development of techniques applying to the precise study of the “higher mental processes”, see the excellent analyses, by J. E. Coover and Franklin Fearing, of the pioneer work of H. Ebbinghaus and of the Würzburg Laboratory, in “Methods in Social Science”, edited by Rice, pp. 707–728.

15a Lovejoy, op. cit.

16. Cf. Cooley, “Life and the Student”, p. 151; also, Mayer, “Seven Seals of Science”, pp. 206, 386–387.

17. Mayer, “Seven Seals of Science”, p. 203.

18. Ibid., pp. 208–209.

19. Ibid., pp. 253–264.

20. Cf. R. B. Lindsay, “Some Philosophical Aspects of Recent Atomic Theory”, Scientific Monthly, April 1928, pp. 299–305; J. Rud Nielsen, “Philosophical Implications of Modern Physical Science”, Scientific Monthly, June, 1931, pp. 546–555; C. G. Darwin, “The Uncertainty Principle in Modern Physics”, Scientific Monthly, May, 1932, pp. 387–396.

21. Cf. forthcoming article by present writer entitled, “Comparative Value and Human Behavior”.

21a There is another meaning sometimes proposed for “objective”, viz., that which would have the concept coincide with the abstracting operation in physical and biological science, by means of which “irrelevant” factors (such as the influence of the air on a falling body) are omitted in controlled experiments (as in a vacuum). But a controlled experiment does not take nature as the observer finds it, in all its pristine “objectivity”. Experimental “abstraction” is a decidedly “subjective” operation, even though it is admittedly one of the most important refinements of scientific method in bringing to light the invariants of nature. See L. L. Bernard “The Objective Viewpoint in Sociology”, American Journal of Sociology, November, 1919, pp. 298–325 (307). Attempts to substitute explicit-implicit for objective-subjective obviously solve none of the problems outlined in this section. See Floyd H. Allport and Dale A. Hartman, in “Methods in Social Science”, edited by Rice, pp. 308 ff, 345 ff.

22. A recent publication giving details with respect to the natural science point of view is: “Trends in American Sociology”, edited by Lundberg, Bain, Anderson, and others, Harpers, New York, 1929. For the cultural point of view, see Charles A. Ellwood, “Methods in Sociology”, Duke University Press, Durham, 1933. Cf., also, “Methods in Social Science”, edited by Stuart A. Rice, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1931.

23. Cf. Edward B. Tylor, “Primitive Culture”, John Murray, London, 1871, 2 vols.; A. A. Goldenweiser, “History, Psychology and Culture”, Jour. Philos. Psycho. and Sci. Method, October, 1918, pp. 561–571, 589–607; Clark Wissler, “Man and Culture”, T. T. Crowell, New York, 1923; M. J. Herskovits and M. M. Willey, “The Cultural Approach to Sociology”, American Journal of Sociology, Sept., 1923, pp. 189–199; Malcolm M. Willey, “Society and its Cultural Heritage”, in An Introduction to Sociology, edited by Davis and Barnes, D. C. Heath, New York, 1927; Joseph Mayer, “Review of a Guide to Historical Literature”, Isis, April, 1932, pp. 459 ff.

24. Cf. W. F. Ogburn, “Social Change”, B. W. Huebsch, New York, 1922; A. A. Goldenweiser, “Cultural Anthropology”, in “The History and Prospects of the Social Sciences”, H. E. Barnes, ed., Knopf, New York, 1925; F. S. Chapin, “Cultural Change”, Century Co., New York, 1928.

25. Faris. op. cit., p. 687.

26. Ibid. The natural-science sociologists rightly react against moral pronouncements that are “presumptuous” and “pontifical”; but they cannot thus evade the issue that, in any “planned control” or “new deal” changes, some “standard” or “norm” is implied. See F. H. Giddings, “The Ethics of Social Progress”, International Journal of Ethics January, 1893, pp. 137–164; A. J. Todd, “Theories of Social Progress”, Macmillan, New York, 1918; L. L. Bernard, “The Conditions of Social Progress”, American Journal of Sociology, July, 1922, pp. 21–48; also his “The Development of the Concept of Progress”, Social Forces, January, 1925, pp. 207–212; May, 1925, pp. 617–622; Sept., 1925, pp. 36–43; L. T. Hobhouse, “Social Development”, Allen & Unwin, London, 1924; E. Sapir, “Culture, Genuine and Spurious”, American Journal of Sociology, January, 1924, pp. 401–417; U. G. Weatherly, “Social Progress”, J. B. Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1926; C. A. Ellwood, “Cultural Evolution”, Century Co., New York, 1927; J. K. Folsom, “Culture and Social Progress”, Longmans Green, New York, 1928; J. O. Hertzler, “Social Progress”, Century Co., New York, 1928.

27. Cf. Ellwood, “Methods in Sociology”, pp. 81, 128; also most of the references in footnote 26.

28. For further references with respect to scientific method, see: Frederick Barry, “The Scientific Habit of Thought”, Columbia University Press, New York, 1927; A. d'Abro, “The Evolution of Scientific Thought from Newton to Einstein”, Boni & Liveright, New York, 1927; Joseph Mayer, “The Seven Seals of Science”, Century Co., New York, 1927; Jacques Rueff, “From the Physical to the Social Sciences”, The Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1929.