THE LIMITATIONS OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

In: Kyklos: international review for social sciences, Band 9, Heft 1, S. 65-76

Abstract

SUMMARYThe fact has been widely recognized that the present stagnation of social sciences is fraught with dangers for the physical existence of humanity. This premise being accepted, the article sets out to discover the factors hampering the development of social sciences. These, it is here suggested, have three sources: (1) the nature of the subject of enquiry; (2) the nature of the empiric method and (3) the limited applicability of the present‐day social sciences to the life of the private individual.The difficulties attributable to the first source are two: the high degree of differentiation in human psychology and the inventive capacity of the human mind. Both of them have the effect of creating a pattern of behaviour distinguished by great variety and rapidity of change. Ensuing, to some extent, from the other two is the third characteristic, namely the fact that some of our lines of behaviour are incapable of being measured quantitatively. Under such conditions, the task of scientific analysis is obviously extremely difficult, and this accounts for the strong "post‐ante" bias inherent in most of our present‐day social sciences.The empirical method of analysis, so much in vogue at present, has contributed two additional difficulties of its own. These are: taxonomic approach and anti‐normative inclination. The former is another way of saying that, unlike their predecessors in the 18th and 19th centuries, which operated on the implied assumption of the perennial uniformity of human behaviour, the present‐day social sciences have adopted the method of dealing with each situation as a unique case. Consequently, the "social laws" derived from this procedure have only a limited validity.It was the very simplicity of the social sciences of the preceding two centuries that made them popular and gave them an influence over the actual shaping of public life, and, incidentally, it is the lack of such simplicity that so effectually prevents the social sciences of today from winning popularity. For it is manifest that, in the present state of social knowledge, an extremely important aim of social science—probably the most important of all its aims—namely, to help the individual to form a comprehensive and consistent outlook on life, is a dream of the very distant future.But, however formidable the difficulties in this field may be, the need for the social sciences of our day to produce a coherent synthesis is most pressing. This is so because of (1) the decline in the influence of religion, (2) the increasing capacity of man for self‐destruction and (3) the existence of sharp political conflict between the communist and non‐communist worlds. This necessity being admitted, a further problem arises. It is a question of popularizing the social sciences. For, assuming that our social sciences are, or will shortly be, capable of serving as a guide to the understanding of social life, it is obvious that unless such knowledge is widely spread it will remain useless. Here the main stumbling‐block is the low earning power of social sciences. Thus it would appear that the prospects of solving the problems connected with the relative underdevelopment of our social knowledge are by no means hopeful.