SOCIAL SCIENCE FOUNDED ON A UNIFIED NATURAL SCIENCE 475 



makes social science interesting in its own right? ^ Another 

 sign is the notorious fact that the most heroic efforts to arrive 

 at a theoretical structure in the social sciences have yielded 

 nothing comparable to that of natural science. 



If we grant that the point-of-view of psychology and soci- 

 ology are essentially different, since they have a different orien- 

 tation with regard to theory and with regard to the historical 

 and concrete, then we can easily defend the autonomy of the 

 social sciences, since they will have their own formal object. 



Psychology regards man and his behavior as they are deter- 

 mined by man's inborn biological structure and by his relation 

 to his natural environment. The social sciences on the other 

 hand study this same human being and his behavior not as 

 innately determined or naturally environed, but as they are 

 modified through the institutions, customs and artificial en- 

 vironment which man has himself created. To be brief, psy- 

 chology deals with man as God and natural forces have made 

 him, the social sciences deal with man as he has made himself. 



Since those patterns of behavior vvhich fall under human 

 control are ever shifting, since they are strictly historical and 

 contingent entities, the social sciences are ultimately concerned 

 not with a universal theory, but with the analysis of what is 

 essentially historical and existential. They are, as it were, the 

 scientific refinement and elaboration of human experience, that 

 gradually accumulated ability to face our own unique situation 

 in the light of all our previous situations. 



The Social Sciences and Value 



The perennial problem of whether social science must be 

 " value-free " takes on a new aspect once it is seen that the 

 conceptual schemes of social science are not the goal but the 

 guides by which it is able to penetrate and understand con- 



^ Significant in this respect have been the very diverse attitudes of American 

 sociologists to the social action theory proposed by Talcott Parsons which had 

 European origins. See Preston Valien and Bonita Valien, " General Sociological 

 Theories of Current Reference," in Becker and BoskofI, op. cit., pp. 78-92. 



