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tematically applied to the development of social inventions to meet 

 human needs. 



A long list of important social inventions had contributed to social, 

 political, and economic progress before 1945. A random sampling of 

 this list might include such items as — 



parliamentary procedure work simplification surveys 



the Australian ballot retirement pensions 



Federal-State grants-in-aid insiu-ance 



budgeting and accounting methods mass public education 



the census institutional waste disposal 



Government corporations public hygiene 



job and personnel classification statistical sampling and quality 



national income and product sta- control 



tistics workmen's compensation and un- 



hospitals employment compensation 



clinics opinion polls 



institutional outpatient care 



The relationship between these inventions of applied social science 

 and the data, theories, and principles produced by basic research 

 in the social sciences, is analogous to that in any other field of science. 

 Invention has often come into being empirically, without benefit of, 

 and in anticipation of, the development of fundamental theory. In 

 the electric storage battery, for instance, the invention was empirical 

 and the theory came later. So, also, with the wheel and the Code of 

 Hammurabi. In many other cases, theory pointed the way to solution 

 of a technological or social problem, such as Albert Einstein's theory 

 of the equivalence of matter and energy leading to the discovery 

 of nuclear energy, or the Pavlov and Skinner theories of conditioned 

 response and reinforcement leading to the teaching machine. In 

 other cases, refinement of understanding led to the correction of a 

 misconception — such as the notion that metals failed by "crystalliza- 

 tion," that alcohol potations were a specific for snakebite, that 

 insanity resulted from exposure to moonlight, or that criminal tend- 

 encies could be eradicated by severe enough punishment. 



Whether the invention is in technology, biology, medicine, or the 

 social science fields, it is more likely to be relevant to the real problem 

 if the inventor knows what the facts are. It is the function of basic 

 scientific research to provide the facts. The issue in 1945-47 was 

 whether the social sciences were ready to accept full partnership in a 

 national endeavor to this end. 



II. Issues Confronting Acceptance of the Social Sciences in 1945 



When the hearings on science legislation opened before the Senate 

 Subcommittee on War Mobilization, October 8, 1945, the proposal 

 of President Truman that the social sciences be included was already 

 confronted with numerous obstacles. The social sciences tended to 

 have unfavorable connotations for many people: as connected with 

 socialism, authoritarianism, and improper manipulation of people; as 

 an attempt to apply scientific methods to a field that lay beyond the 

 reach of science; as connected with "isms" and "crackpot ideas." The 

 addition of the social sciences to the NSF proposal was evidently an 

 afterthought; it had not even been considered or studied by the four 



