SOCIAL SCIENCE FOUNDED ON A UNIFIED NATURAL SCIENCE 471 



Is it safe to say that psychology studies the individual, social 

 science studies society, and social psychology studies the indi- 

 vidual in society? Of the many episteraological difficulties in 

 modern science which had their origin in the dualism of 

 Descartes, not the least is the notion that psychology deals 

 only with the individual as a conscious self. What psychologist 

 today would accept such a definition of his field? How can 

 there possibly be a psychology of the individual in isolation 

 from his social behavior and environment? Man lives and 

 develops psychologically only as a social animal, in family and 

 society. Psychology, therefore, must be a social psychology 

 to be a science at all. 



A second difficulty of a more technical but very fundamental 

 character is raised by definitions of this type. It is a common 

 error to classify sciences merely according to their subject 

 matter. By such a procedure every field can be divided and 

 subdivided into countless new disciplines merely by the ad- 

 vance of science from general to detailed questions. To proceed 

 in this way is to make the number of sciences equal to the 

 number of objects in the universe — a sort of classification which 

 may serve the purpose of indexing, but which does not show the 

 formal or axiomatic structure of sciences. Is organic chemistry 

 in any significant sense a different science from inorganic 

 chemistry? If so, then must the chemistry of proteins be con- 

 sidered a different science from that of carbohydrates and so on? 



The classification of the sciences to be meaningful must not 

 be based on a mere difference of subject matter, or levels of 

 generality and particularity, but on a difference of point-of- 

 view, of basic principles, and of the methodology consequent 

 on point-of-view and principles. There must be, as the logicians 

 say, a difference of formal object.^ 



To mark off the social sciences, therefore, as dealing with 

 the more social aspects of human behavior does not separate 

 it in any formal sense from psychology, nor from the rest of 



" See W. H. Kane, " Abstraction and the Distinction of the Sciences," The 

 Thoviist, XVII (1954), 43-68. 



