SOCIAL SCIENCE FOUNDED ON A UNIFIED NATURAL SCIENCE 473 



wide within American social thought itself. Of course all social 

 scientists admit that both elements are important, but some 

 anxiously emphasize the building of conceptual systems at a 

 high level of abstraction, others an intense application to 

 empirical description and analysis. In practice this turns out 

 not merely to be a difference in emphasis, but even one of 

 direction, of fundamental orientation.^ 



It is significant that for the most part those who are especi- 

 ally interested in psychology tend to favor a theory-oriented 

 social science. While the other group (still probably the ma- 

 jority in American sociology) are much more concerned with 

 social problems, with the analysis and diagnosis of concrete his- 

 torical situations, leading to the definition of alternatives for 

 decision by policy-makers.*^ 



If we are to accept the notion that the social sciences are a 



° See the discussion in A. Rose, Theory and Method in Social Science (University 

 of Minnesota Press, 1954) pp. 245-255. 



" Thus Robert K. Merton in his introduction to Sociology Today: Problems 

 and Prospects, ed. by himself, Leonard Broom, and Leonard S. Cottrell, Jr. for 

 the American Sociological Society (New York: Basic Books, 1959) says: " Practi- 

 cally all the contributors to this book take note of how the division of sociology 

 into a growing number of specialties has afiected the flow of problems needing 

 inquiry. In one form, a speciality is seen as affording a strategic site for investi- 

 gating problems of general import for sociological theory. In another, and perhaps 

 more frequent, form, general theory is seen as a source of problems that require 

 solution to advance special fields, such as the sociology of law, cities, race and 

 ethnic relations, criminology, and mass communications." p. xxix. Charles H. Page 

 in the same volume discussing the motives which lead students into the field of 

 sociology shows that for many it is the idea that social sciences aim at social reform. 

 " This view, fairly widespread in academic faculties and among college students, 

 draws many of the latter to classes in sociology, where it functions, moreover, to 

 induce disenchantment when students confront extreme advocacy of a disinterested 

 science of social life. Here is a problem for teachers, especially for those who fail 

 to make clear that many sociological scholars of stature conceive of their disci- 

 pline as scientific, certainly, but nevertheless directly involved in human better- 

 ment." p. 586. An odd fact is that the most militant positivists among sociologists 

 are also the most explicit in their assertion of the practical character of sociology, 

 thus G. A. Lundberg writes, " Positivists do not admit the assumed dichotomy 

 between the pursuit of science on the one hand and social action on the other. 

 We contend, on the contrary, that the pursuit of science is the most fundamental 

 of all social actions." " Contemporary Positivism in Sociology," American Socio- 

 logical Revieiv, IV (1939) , 42-55, quoted in Becker and Boskoff, op. cit., p. 195. 



