The great differences between the characteristic methods of the physical sciences and those of the social sciences explain why the natural scientist who turns to the work of the professional students of social phenomena so often feels that he has got among a company of people who habitually commit all the mortal sins which he is most careful to avoid, and that a science of society conforming to his standards does not yet exist. From this to the attempt to create a new science of society which satisfies his conception of Science is but a step. During the last four generations attempts of this kind have been constantly made; and though they have never produced the results which had been expected, and though they did not even succeed in creating that continuous tradition which is the symptom of a healthy discipline, they are repeated almost every month by someone who hopes thereby to revolutionize social thought. Yet, though these efforts are mostly disconnected, they regularly show certain characteristic features which we must now consider. These methodological features can be conveniently treated under the headings of ``objectivism,'' ``collectivism,'' and ``historicism,'' corresponding to the ``subjectivism,'' the individualism,'' and the theoretical character of the developed disciplines of social study.
The attitude which, for want of a better term, we shall call the ``objectivism'' of the scientistic approach to the study of man and society, has found its most characteristic expression in the various attempts to dispense with our subjective knowledge of the working of the human mind, attempts which in various forms have affected almost all branches of social study. From Auguste Comte's denial of the possibility of introspection, through various attempts to create an ``objective psychology,'' down to the behaviorism of J. B. Watson and the ``physicalism'' of O. Neurath, a long series of authors have attempted to do without the knowledge derived from ``introspection.'' But, as can be easily shown, these attempts to avoid the use of knowledge which we possess are bound to break down.
A behaviorist or physicalist, to be consistent, ought not to begin by observing the reactions of people to what our senses tell us are similar objects; he ought to confine himself to studying the reactions to stimuli which are identical in a strictly physical sense. He ought, for example, not to study the reactions of persons who are shown a red circle or made to hear a certain tune, but solely the effects of a light wave of a certain frequency on a particular point of the retina of the human eye, etc., etc. No behaviorist, however, seriously contemplates doing so. They all take it naively for granted that what appears alike to us will also appear alike to other people. Though they have no business to do so, they make constant use of the classification of external stimuli by our senses and our mind as alike or unlike, a classification which we know only from our personal experience of it and which is not based on any objective tests showing that these facts also behave similarly in relation to each other. This applies as much to what we commonly regard as simple sense qualities, such as color, the pitch of sound, smell, etc., as to our perception of configurations (Gestalten) by which we classify physically very different things as specimens of a particular ``shape,'' for example, as a circle or a certain tune. To the behaviorist or physicalist the fact that we recognize these things as similar is no problem.
This naive attitude, however, is in no way justified by what the development of physical science itself teaches us. As we have seen before,5.1 one of the main results of this development is that things that to us appear alike may not be alike in any objective sense, that is, may have no other properties in common. Once we have to recognize, however, that things differ in their effects on our senses not necessarily in the same way in which they differ in their behavior toward each other, we are no longer entitled to take it for granted that what to us appears alike or different will also appear so to others. That this is so as a rule is an important empirical fact which, on the one hand, demands explanation (a task for psychology) and which, on the other hand, must be accepted as a basic datum in our study of people's conduct. That different objects mean the same thing to different people, and that different people mean the same thing by different acts, remain important facts though physical science may show that these objects or acts possess no other common properties.
It is true, of course, that we know nothing about other people's minds except through sense perceptions, that is, the observation of physical facts. But this does not mean that we know nothing but physical facts. Of what kind the facts are with which we have to deal in any discipline is not determined by all the properties possessed by the concrete objects to which the discipline applies, but only by those properties by which we classify them for the purposes of the discipline in question. To take an example from the physical sciences: all levers or pendulums of which we can conceive have chemical and optical properties; but when we talk about levers or pendulums we do not talk about chemical or optical facts. What make a number of individual phenomena facts of one kind are the attributes which we select in order to treat them as members of one class. And though all social phenomena with which we can possibly be concerned will possess physical attributes, this does not mean that they must be physical facts for our purpose.
The significant point about the objects of human
activity with which we are concerned in the social sciences, and about these human activities themselves, is
that in interpreting human activities we spontaneously
and unconsciously class together as instances of the
same object or the same act any one of a large number
of physical facts which may have no physical property
in common. We know that other people like ourselves
regard any one of a large number of physically different things, a, b, c, d, ...etc., as belonging to the
same class; and we know this because other people, like
ourselves, react to any one of these things by any one
of the movements ,
,
,
, ...which again may have
no physical property in common. Yet this knowledge on
which we constantly act, which must necessarily precede, and is presupposed by, any communication with
other men, is not conscious knowledge in the sense that
we are in a position exhaustively to enumerate all the
different physical phenomena which we unhesitatingly
recognize as members of the class: we do not know
which of many possible combinations of physical properties we shall recognize as a certain word, or as a
``friendly face'' or a ``threatening gesture.'' Probably in
no single instance has experimental research yet succeeded in precisely determining the range of different
phenomena which we unhesitatingly treat as meaning
the same thing to us as well as to other people; yet we
constantly and successfully act on the assumption that
we do classify these things in the same manner as other
people do. We are not in a position--and may never be
in the position--to substitute objects defined in physical
terms for the mental categories we employ in talking
about other people's actions.5.2 Whenever we do so the
physical facts to which we refer are significant not as
physical facts, that is, not as members of a class all of
which have certain physical properties in common, but
as members of a class of what may be physically completely different things but which ``mean'' the same
thing to us.
It becomes necessary here to state explicitly a consideration which is implied in the whole of our argument on this point and which, though it seems to follow from the modern conception of the character of physical research, is yet still somewhat unfamiliar. It is that not only those mental entities, such as ``concepts'' or ``ideas,'' which are commonly recognized as ``abstractions,'' but all mental phenomena, sense perceptions and images as well as the more abstract ``concepts'' and ``ideas,'' must be regarded as acts of classification performed by the brain.5.3 This is, of course, merely another way of saying that the qualities which we perceive are not properties of the objects but ways in which we (individually or as a race) have learned to group or classify external stimuli. To perceive is to assign to a familiar category (or categories): we could not perceive anything completely different from everything else we have ever perceived before. This does not mean, however, that everything which we actually class together must possess common properties additional to the fact that we react in the same way to these things. It is a common but dangerous error to believe that things which our senses or our mind treat as members of the same class must have something else in common beyond being registered in the same manner by our mind. Although there will usually exist some objective justification why we regard certain things as similar, this need not always be the case. But while in our study of nature classifications which are not based on any similarity in the behavior of the objects toward each other must be treated as ``deceptions'' of which we must free ourselves, they are of positive significance in our attempts to understand human action. The important difference between the position of these mental categories in the two spheres is that when we study the working of external nature our sensations and thoughts are not links in the chain of observed events--they are merely about them; but in the mechanism of society they form an essential link, the forces here at work operate through these mental entities which are directly known to us: while the things in the external world do not behave alike or differently because they appear alike to us, we do behave in a similar or different manner because the things appear alike or different to us.
The behaviorist or physicalist who in studying human behavior wished really to avoid using the categories which we find ready in our mind, and who wanted to confine himself strictly to the study of man's reactions to objects defined in physical terms, would consistently have to refuse to say anything about human actions till he had experimentally established how our senses and our mind group external stimuli as alike or unlike. He would have to begin by asking which physical objects appear alike to us and which do not (and how it comes about that they do) before he could seriously undertake to study human behavior toward these things.
It is important to observe that our contention is not that such an attempt to explain the principle of how our mind or our brain transforms physical facts into mental entities is impossible. Once we recognize this as a process of classification there is no reason why we should not learn to understand the principle on which it operates. Classification is, after all, a mechanical process, that is, a process which could be performed by a machine which ``sorts out'' and groups objects according to certain properties.5.4 Our argument is, rather, in the first instance, that for the task of the social sciences such an explanation of the formation of mental entities and their relations to the physical facts which they represent is unnecessary, and that such an explanation would help us in no way in our task; and, second, that such an explanation, although conceivable, is not only not available at present and not likely to be available for a long time yet, but also unlikely to be ever more than an ``explanation of the principle''5.5 on which this apparatus of classification works. It would seem that any apparatus of classification would always have to possess a degree of complexity greater than any one of the different things which it classifies; and if this is correct it would follow that it is impossible that our brain should ever be able to produce a complete explanation (as distinguished from a mere explanation of the principle) of the particular ways in which it itself classifies external stimuli. We shall later have to consider the significance of the related paradox that to ``explain'' our own knowledge would require that we should know more than we actually do, which is, of course, a sell-contradictory statement.
But let us assume for the moment that we had
succeeded in fully reducing all mental phenomena to
physical processes. Assume that we knew the mechanism by which our central nervous system groups any
one of the (elementary or complex) stimuli, a, b, c, ...
or l, m, n, ...or r, s, t, ...into definite classes determined by the fact that to any member of one class we
shall react by any one of the members of the corresponding classes or reactions ,
,
, ...or
,
,
, ...
or
,
,
...This assumption implies both that this
system is not merely familiar to us as the way in which
our own mind acts, but that we explicitly know all the
relations by which it is determined, and that we also
know the mechanism by which the classification is
actually effected. We should then be able strictly to
correlate the mental entities with definite groups of
physical facts. We should thus have ``unified'' science,
but we should be in no better position with respect to
the specific task of the social sciences than we are now.
We should still have to use the old categories, though
we should be able to explain their formation and though
we should know the physical facts ``behind'' them. Although we should know that a different arrangement of
the facts of nature is more appropriate for explaining
external events, in interpreting human actions we
should still have to use the classification in which these
facts actually appear in the minds of the acting people.
Thus, quite apart from the fact that we should probably
have to wait forever till we were able to substitute physical facts for the mental entities, even if this were
achieved we should be no better equipped for the task
we have to solve in the social sciences.
The idea, implied in Comte's hierarchy of the sciences5.6 and in many similar arguments, that the social sciences must in some sense be ``based'' on the physical sciences, that they can only hope for success after the physical sciences have advanced far enough to enable us to treat social phenomena in physical terms, in ``physical language,'' is, therefore, entirely erroneous. The problem of explaining mental processes by physical ones is entirely distinct from the problems of the social sciences, it is a problem for physiological psychology. But whether it is solved or not, for the social sciences the given mental entities must provide the starting point, whether their formation has been explained or not.
We cannot discuss here all the other forms in which the characteristic ``objectivism'' of the scientistic approach has made itself felt and led to error in the social sciences. We shall, in the course of our historical survey, find this tendency to look for the ``real'' attributes of the objects of human activity which lie behind men's views about them, represented in a great many different ways. Only a brief survey can be attempted here.
Nearly as important as the various forms of behaviorism, and closely connected with them, is the common tendency in the study of social phenomena to attempt to disregard all the ``merely'' qualitative phenomena and to concentrate, on the model of the natural sciences, on the quantitative aspects, on what is measurable. We have seen before5.7 how in the natural sciences this tendency is a necessary consequence of their specific task of replacing the picture of the world in terms of sense qualities by one in which the units are defined exclusively by their explicit relations. The success of this method in that field has brought it about that it is now generally regarded as the hallmark of all genuinely scientific procedure. Yet its raison d'être, the need to replace the classification of events which our senses and our mind provide by a more appropriate one, is absent where we try to understand human beings, and where this understanding is made possible by the fact that we have a mind like theirs, and that from the mental categories we have in common with them we can reconstruct the social complexes which are our concern. The blind transfer of the striving for quantitative measurements5.8 to a field in which the specific conditions are not present which give it its basic importance in the natural sciences, is the result of an entirely unfounded prejudice. It is probably responsible for the worst aberrations and absurdities produced by scientism in the social sciences. It not only leads frequently to the selection for study of the most irrelevant aspects of the phenomena because they happen to be measurable, but also to ``measurements'' and assignments of numerical values which are absolutely meaningless. What a distinguished philosopher recently wrote about psychology is at least equally true of the social sciences, namely, that it is only too easy ``to rush off to measure something without considering what it is we are measuring, or what measurement means. In this respect some recent measurements are of the same logical type as Plato's determination that a just ruler is 729 times as happy as an unjust one.''5.9
Closely connected with the tendency to treat the objects of human activity in terms of their ``real'' attributes instead of as what they appear to the acting people is the propensity to conceive of the student of society as endowed with a kind of supermind, with some sort of absolute knowledge, which makes it unnecessary for him to start from what is known by the people whose actions he studies. Among the most characteristic manifestations of this tendency are the various forms of social ``energetics'' which, from the earlier attempts of Ernest Solvay, Wilhelm Ostwald, and F. Soddy down to our own day,5.10 have constantly reappeared among scientists and engineers when they turned to the problems of social organization. The idea underlying these theories is that, as science is supposed to teach that everything can be ultimately reduced to quantities of energy, man should in his plans treat the various things not according to the concrete usefulness they possess for the purposes for which he knows how to use them, but as the interchangeable units of abstract energy which they ``really'' are.
Another, hardly less crude and even more widespread, example of this tendency is the conception of
the ``objective'' possibilities of production, of the
quantity of social output which the physical facts are
supposed to make possible, an idea which frequently
finds expression in quantitative estimates of the supposed ``productive capacity'' of society as a whole.
These estimates regularly refer, not to what men can
produce by means of any stated organization, but to
what in some undefined objective sense ``could'' be produced from the available resources. Most of these assertions have no ascertainable meaning whatever. They
do not mean that or
or any particular organization
of people could achieve these things. What they amount
to is that if all the knowledge dispersed among many
people could be mastered by a single mind, and if this
mastermind could make all the people act at all times as
he wished, certain results could be achieved; but these
results could, of course, not be known to anybody except to such a mastermind. It need hardly be pointed
out that an assertion about a ``possibility'' which is de
pendent on such conditions has no relation to reality.
There is no such thing as the productive capacity of
society in the abstract--apart from particular forms of
organization. The only fact which we can regard as
given is that there are particular people who have
certain concrete knowledge about the way in which
particular things can be used for particular purposes.
This knowledge never exists as an integrated whole or
in one mind, and the only knowledge that can in any
sense be said to exist is these separate and often inconsistent and even conflicting views of different people.
Of very similar nature are the frequent statements about the objective needs of the people, where objective is merely a name for somebody's views about what the people ought to want. We shall have to consider further manifestations of this objectivism toward the end of this part when we turn from the consideration of scientism proper to the effects of the characteristic outlook of the engineer, whose conceptions of ``efficiency'' have been one of the most powerful forces through which this attitude has affected current views on social problems.