Prospects and Possibilities: The New Deal and the New Social Research

Abstract

to reconstruct with the aid of our past experience the picture in the artist's head. Unless it jars our expectations, we say it is a true picture. The foregoing rapid characterization of a method which has been used skilfully in rural research by such writers as J. M. Williams makes no claim to adequacy. Particularly, we have failed to demarcate boundaries between fiction, such as Rolvaag's Giants in the Earth and the first cousin of fiction, such as Sandburg's Lincoln: The Prairie Years, which places closer restrictions on an author's imagination. The whole subject is, of course, beyond the scope of the present paper. It is mentioned here only by way of attempting to see statistical induction, the main subject of our remarks, in an undistorted setting. While the trend in rural research has been perhaps toward the method used by Brunner and Kolb, a very profitable meeting might be devoted soon to a critical reconsideration of the criteria of validity and the practical values of the method used by J. M. Williams. The possibility of eventually imitating physical science in its establishment of universal inductions has not been denied; neither has it been affirmed. Experience in social investigations is too young to permit any discussion of universal inductions except in the abstract. Usually, the mnost we can do is to project results haltingly and then only within the limits of a restricted culture area. This projection, no matter how meticulous our methods in the original historical study, is often just a laymnan's guess. We have not yet been vouchsafed credentials to serve as the oracles of Apollo. And what of it? There is solid, important work to be done, and rural social research is doing it conscientiously.