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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XL VI. No. 1194 



and organization is destined to be a watch- 

 word of the future, whatever the outeome 

 of this war. Organization of our political, 

 economic, educational and general social 

 life will be tried on a scale never before at- 

 tempted, at least in English-speaking coun- 

 tries. Will the organization attempted be 

 wise or otherwise? Wise social organiza- 

 tion is evidently what we need, but it can 

 not be successfully accomplished without 

 scientific knowledge of our social life. Are 

 we, then, as students of the social sciences 

 prepared to give reliable scientific guidance 

 in every field of social activity? Or have 

 we only conflicting opinions to offer? We 

 should face such questions as these can- 

 didly. The watchword of the present is 

 ' ' national service. ' ' Are we fully prepared 

 to do our "bit" in the work of social re- 

 construction which our national welfare 

 and security in the future demand? That, 

 for us who are engaged in scientific and 

 educational work along social lines, is a 

 more important question than whether we 

 are ready to do our " bit " in the war itself ; 

 for whether this war will prove to be a 

 great victory for humanity and civilization 

 will be evident, not upon the announcement 

 of the terms of peace, but a generation or 

 two thereafter. 



What, then, are the social sciences ready 

 to do for civilization ? 



The editor of The Scientific Monthly, in 

 commenting on the papers presented before 

 the Section for Social and Economic Sci- 

 ence of the American Association for the 

 Advancement of Science in the year 1915, 

 published in the April, 1916, issue of that 

 journal, said: 



An obvious difference exists between tbe eleven 

 sections of the Ajuerican Association devoted to 

 the natural sciences and the one devoted to the 

 social and economic sciences. The former are in 

 the main concerned with the discovery of truth, 

 the latter in the main with the expression of opin- 

 ion. 



While the work of the Social and Eco- 

 nomic Section of the American Association 

 may, perhaps, justly be held to be not rep- 

 resentative of the best work in the social 

 sciences, yet the general justice of this im- 

 plied criticism of the social sciences can not 

 be doubted. In spite of the labors of many 

 eminent minds, in the main the social sci- 

 ences, especially those of a theoretical na- 

 ture, do remain still to-day in the realm of 

 opinion rather than in the realm of accu- 

 rate and verified truth. This is shown by 

 the fact that not infrequently even in aca- 

 demic circles they are developed in the 

 service of fads, social, political, metaphys- 

 ical and methodological. This was once 

 supposed not to be true of the older social 

 sciences, such as economics and polities, but 

 in the light of recent events it would be a 

 very rash man who would affirm that even 

 these older sciences have yet passed from 

 the stage of opinion to that of verified sci- 

 entific knowledge. It may possibly be said 

 that when the whole world is in a condition 

 of confusion and revolution, it is too much 

 to expect that the social sciences will not 

 also reflect this condition. But science is 

 supposed to be something which, aiming as 

 it does at the discovery of objective, verifi- 

 able knowledge, transcends the mere Zeit- 

 geist. Besides, if the social sciences are in 

 a state of confusion, the world can scarcely 

 be expected to look to them to lead it out of 

 its present confusion into a new and better 

 day of peace, harmony and agreement as to 

 the fundamentals of human living. It is 

 true that the disagreements among the 

 more carefully trained scientific social 

 thinkers are much less than what the pub- 

 lic suppose; but it is useless to deny that 

 there are disagreements of the most funda- 

 mental sort, and that the social sciences 

 suffer, as well as the world, from such dis- 

 agreements. Of course, the lateness of their 

 development and the complexity of the 

 subject-matter with which they deal ex- 



