The Social Sciences 75 



alter our whole attitude toward what is moral and not moral 

 in the field of sexual behavior, but nobody pays the shghtest 

 attention. But let a single sociologist point out that as a 

 matter of fact many people engage in sexual behavior widely 

 different from the accepted social and legal norms, and a 

 storm of protest breaks out. Not only are his motives sus- 

 pect on moral grounds, but his scientific procedures are 

 scrutinized by columnists and reviewers, ministers and col- 

 lege presidents, with an intensity never aroused by the often 

 less precise investigations of the natural scientist obscurely 

 at work in his laboratory. Much perfectly vaUd scientific 

 study, not only of sex behavior but of such matters as the 

 way voters make up their minds and the balance of trade 

 between countries, is thrown out of court simply because 

 the results conflict with the preconceptions and material 

 self-interest of given groups of individuals. 



In addition to their inevitable involvement with current 

 human affairs, the social sciences suffer from the difficulties 

 inherent in the study of systems of organized complexity 

 discussed on page 41. Admittedly, science has not yet 

 developed fully competent ways of dealing with these mul- 

 tiple, variable, interlocking systems. It will be a long time, 

 therefore, before the social sciences can come up with the 

 sort of overarching generalizations that Newton and Ein- 

 stein gave to physics and Darwin gave to biology. Until 

 they do, they will suffer from a sense of inferiority and 

 inadequate prestige. This lack of prestige and the apparent 

 difficulty of making recognizable progress in many areas 

 of the social sciences have in the past made for difficulties 

 in recruiting the best minds into the field. Most studies have 

 shown that graduate students in the social sciences are at 

 the bottom of the list of scientists as far as the qualities 

 measured by the current IQ test are concerned. Thus the 

 social sciences tend to suffer from a vicious circle: relatively 



