168 EMPIRICAL TOOLS AND EMPIRICISM 



Statistical considerations alone can never be decisive because 

 scientists always rely more heavily on quite a different criterion of 

 judgment. Cohen points to that criterion while citing yet another 

 case where the statistics are (and rightly, I suppose) simply held 

 irrelevant. 



. . . for a number of years the membership in the International As- 

 sociation of Machinists shows a very high correlation (86 per cent) 

 with the death rate in the state of Hyderabad. If instances of this 

 sort do not come to our attention more often it is because we do not 

 look for them. We generally look for correlations where we have some 

 reason to suppose that there is a real connection [and we reject cor- 

 relations whenever we feel that no such reason exists]. 



But it is ive who make the theories and hypotheses which furnish us 

 with "reasons," and ice who appraise their adequacy. In such cases 

 our ultimate reliance is patently what indeed it is everywhere. Al- 

 ways in the end we are brought back to human judgments dependent 

 on fallible preconceived ideas. 



THE MYTH OF METHOD 



Speaking of self-sufficient Method— scientific, experimental, statisti- 

 cal, or what you will~we speak of a chimera. A Method, seeking to 

 invest the construction of science with an inhuman certainty, must 

 seek a dehumanization of science that ends inevitably by making sci- 

 ence humanly impossible. Potential danger then lurks in die myth of 

 Method— danger that working scientists might actually come to take 

 it seriously. In the social sciences credulity of this myth exacts a 

 hea\'y toll— as on occasion it does even in psychology, presumably it- 

 self a natural science. 



Clipping the wings of inspiration, strictures of Method must 

 cripple the flight of science. Born writes: 



I believe that there is no philosophical highroad in science, with 

 epistemological signposts. No, we are in a jungle and find our way 

 by trial and error, building our road behind us as we proceed. We do 

 not jind signposts at crossroads, but our own scouts erect them, to 

 help the rest. 



Methodological scruples endanger the bold, lawless enterprise of 

 scouts, which has made science what it is today— which will again be 

 required to make it all it hopes to become. However shockingly, awk- 



