An Analysis of Interactions between the Natural Sciences and the Social Sciences

Abstract

Ever since the time of Aristotle, the natural sciences and medicine have furnished analogies for studies of governments, classifications of constitutions, and analyses of society.* One of the fruits of the Scientific Revolution was the vision of a social science — a science of government, of individual behavior, and of society — that would take its place among the triumphant sciences, producing its own Newtons and Harveys. The goal was not only to achieve a science with the same foundations of certain knowledge as physics and biology; there was thought to be a commonality of method that would advance the social sciences in the way that had worked so well in the physical and biological sciences. Any such social science, it was assumed, would be based on experiments and critical observations, would become quantitative, and would eventually take the highest form known to the sciences — expression in a sequence of mathematical equations.