Philosophy for Social Inquiry

Abstract

NOBODY TODAY DENIES the utility of the social sciences. If one were inclined to do so, the military expenditures of the federal government on social inquiry would silence him at once. Yet the pick-up in business occasioned by the war in Korea and the general threat it entails, serves only to put off a pervasive restlessness or uneasiness among the more thoughtful inquirers within the ranks. The concrete difficulties which make for the underlying uncertainties about social inquiry are easy to discern. In the first place the rapidly expanded activities of social science during the great depression and the second world war bore practically no fruit in the way of sound theoretical progress. Secondly, although we may claim to have won some very important practical techniques for controlling economic conditions within very narrow limiting conditions, research activities since the war have apparently accomplished nothing in the way of removing the basic social difficulties which lead to war, not to mention other increasing social tensions. It looks as though the more social problems we 'solve the more difficult it becomes to reach real solutions. Even those who profess loudly a complete separation between theory and practice can hardly fail to be concerned about the situation, although they may loudly profess that it is merely a practical concern to keep pure social science alive. Indeed, a cynical theorist might find a superficial parallel between this development in the social area and an apparently corresponding development in the physical sciences. He might argue, for example, that the progress of physics has resulted in both a multiplication of new problems and an increasing difficulty in answering basic physical questions. For the sake of examining this apparent parallel between social and physical inquiry let us suppose for the moment that the claim about the physical sciences is legitimate. Even so, and even supposing a complete separation of theory, yet the parallel breaks down. For as physical science develops there is no corresponding difficulty in solving the practical physical problems-that is, technological problems-which arise. The progress of the physical sciences is doubtless a factor in the general breakdown