6 



The Social Sciences 



Up to now we have been talking about science as 

 if all it embraced were the physical and the biological 

 sciences. Broadly defined, these two branches of science 

 ought to cover just about everything that is knowable 

 through the use of the scientific method. It has been cus- 

 tomary, however, to recognize a separate group of disci- 

 plines which deal with certain aspects of man's behavior. 

 Of these the most prominent are economics, sociology, 

 social psychology, and cultural anthropology. History is 

 sometimes included as a science and sometimes regarded 

 as an art. Its classification would appear to be largely a 

 matter of taste. My taste is to exclude a discussion of history 

 in this book on the practical, but perhaps shghtly arbitrary, 

 ground that most young people who are thinking of becom- 

 ing scientists are not as a matter of fact thinking of be- 

 coming historians. 



Most of economics and sociology are clearly more scien- 

 tific in method and outlook than history is.^ Both are pri- 

 marily concerned with discovering regularities in human 

 behavior; both have developed excellent methods of collect- 

 ing and analyzing the data generated by such behavior. 

 Certain types of sociologists, especially those concerned 

 with the behavior of small groups of people, have evolved 

 experimental methods of observation. Even economists can 



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