The Limits of Social Science. II.

Abstract

Social Science.-Social science and its methods differ from the physical sciences because of (I) a different kind of data, and of time or space units used for analysis; (2) a greater mutability of these data; (3) a union of mechanistic and telic viewpoints; and (4) a stress of qualitative rather than quantitative correlations. The data are reduced to units which consist of physical objects known to our senses, or of psychic data, or preferably of relations between these two classes or between psychic data alone. The units are necessarily composite, and center in the ideas, interests, and efforts of human beings. The spatial and temporal units are but vaguely defined, and therefore make the contents of our event-units uncetain in a causal diagnosis. The instability of social data and of our units for measurement is due to laws of life in general, and to laws of mind or human behavior in particular. Thus socail processes must always be treated as a dynamic fact. As for the problem of social casuality, the so...