Man the Unfinished

Abstract

BERTRAND RUSSELL once suggested a new and impish form of conjugating common verbs. A few examples will suggest his idea: am firm, you are insistent, he is pigheaded; or I think, you cerebrate, he theorizes, or, finally, am open-minded, you are uncertain, he is positively schizoid. The nemesis of perspectives could hardly be better put. All derision aside I want to speak about perspectives and their bearing on the growth of social science. What I shall have to say is deliberately and intentionally one-sided; not only is there another side to the question, but the other side is more plausible, more systematic, and it packs a heavier artillery of imposing authorities. The issue will probably not be resolved by complete victory of either side; if we can settle for a truce, this might be the most satisfactory solution. In the past, scientific advance has followed more than one productive conflict of ideas. Our focus of attention is on that hoariest of problems-the nature of human nature. Even as I say this I realize that to put it in these terms seems to contradict the main purpose of my remarks. To a great many people, saying that anything has a nature implies that it is fixed, settled, and permanent. Sociologists and psychologists are, of course, more sophisticated than this. They are quite aware that a process is going on here, though they keep it in the background and obscure it by continual reference to the personality system. The history of human nature theory would have been quite different if semantic choice had fastened on configuration rather than system, and no doubt this is precisely what Lewin was trying to do in his life work. The very connotation of the term system, however, tends to make structure primary and process secondary, contained, boundaryorganized, whereas what we seem to find inductively is that