SOCIAL SCIENCE FOUNDED ON A UNIFIED NATURAL SCIENCE 477 



the effectiveness of the means which they have chosen in view 

 of these goals. The choice of goals is simply an historical phe- 

 nomenon to be explained, but not to be evaluated. Such a 

 position ignores one great social fact which has stood the test 

 of many attacks, namely that certain selected goals tend to 

 persist through time and space. The infinite historical and 

 geographical variety of social groups is not without pattern. 

 Rather there are certain stable goals which a society must 

 achieve or cease to develop or exist. A society which does not 

 nourish its members, help provide for the family, help with 

 protection from destruction, or supply an organized pattern of 

 activity and a vision of the goal to be socially achieved, or which 

 does this ineffectively cannot long survive. In recent years 

 sociologists have argued that a society which does not respect 

 the dignity and inherent rights of the human person will become 

 socially rigid, unadaptable and eventually irrational in its 

 policy.^ 



Thus an examination of the goals actually sought by social 

 groups reveals that some have about them a stability and 

 harmony with the preservation and rational development of 

 groups and individuals, while others are shifting or socially 

 disruptive. Goals which are variable can be considered as in- 

 termediate goals, and hence can be measured like means accord- 

 ing to whether they are compatible with more fundamental 

 goals or not. 



It is the more stable and permanent goals which have value 

 for society in themselves, and not merely as means. What is 

 their origin, and how can they be accurately determined.? I 

 think that confronted with this question we should not hesi- 

 tate to affirm that these fundamental goals are not determined 



* Cf. William L. Kolb, " The Changing Prominence of Values in Modern 

 Sociological Theory," Becker and BoskofiP, op. cit. pp. 93-132; David Bidny, " The 

 Philosophical Presuppositions of Cultural Relativism and Cultural Absolutism," 

 in Leo R. Ward, Ethics and the Social Sciences (Notre Dame, 1959), pp. 51-76; 

 Clyde Kluckhohn, " Values and Value Orientation in the Theory of Action," in 

 Talcott Parsons and E. A. Shils, Toward a General Theory of Action (Cambridge, 

 Mass.: Harvard U. Press, 1952), pp. 388-433. 



