14 ECONOMICS 



as mutually exclusive alternatives in the study of any of the con- 

 crete sciences. Mathematics only, of all the sciences, moves in the 

 realm of purely abstract relations, dependent for the truth of its 

 conclusions only on the inner or logical consistency of its deductive 

 conclusions, not on their correspondence to any specific set of con- 

 crete facts. The ideal of shaping the social sciences on the model 

 of mathematics misled for a long time the votaries of the science 

 whose data were, to a greater or less degree, made up of the facts of 

 the concrete world. In every branch of inquiry except mathematics, 

 both inductive and deductive mental processes are constantly 

 employed. They are like the chisel and the hammer to the graver, 

 who must now use one, now another, and again both together. 

 Man's power of thought is not so in excess of its task of understand- 

 ing the economic world that only half of it need be exerted. 



The natural sciences, such as physics, chemistry, and, later, 

 biology, suggested an analogy for economic students which was as 

 misleading, perhaps, as was that of mathematics. The rapid ad- 

 vance of the natural sciences, both in the bulk and in the exactness 

 of their conclusions, seemed to challenge economics and to point 

 the way to progress. Their predominant use of the inductive 

 method served to blind to the fact that deductive processes were 

 also frequently employed, and to offer the false hope that social 

 truths were to be found, if sought, in an exclusive study of the facts 

 of the objective world. And thus, in turn, as other sciences, as 

 psychology and biology, have taken the center of the stage and 

 have played the leading role in the drama of human progress, eco- 

 nomic studies have been more or less influenced by their examples. 



The choice of method in any science must be made in the light 

 of reason, not in the deceptive shadows of analogy. The division 

 between the methods of economics and of the natural sciences is to 

 be found in the nature of the materials dealt with and in the point 

 of departure, whether in the thoughts of men or in the world of 

 things, the subjective and the objective methods. This dis- 

 tinction appears to correspond with that between induction and 

 deduction, but this correspondence is external and fortuitous rather 

 than essential, as will be seen in considering more fully the special 

 character of the social sciences. 



Dual nature of economics. The social sciences have a character 

 as distinct from pure mathematics on the one hand as from the 

 physical sciences on the other. Mathematics presents the type of 

 most abstract subjects of scientific thought; physics the type of the 

 most concrete subjects; while social science presents a dual aspect. 

 But although it may seem to share the features of the other two 

 types, it is in no sense a mere compound of them. Mathematics 

 is concerned with the logical relations of numbers; physics with the 



