472 



SCIENCE 



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



mere gathering and amassing of facts — is 

 often but superficiality under another 

 name. If there is any hope of the social 

 sciences getting beyond the stage of mere 

 socially approved opinions, and of coming 

 to substantial agreement on fundamental 

 issues, it must be through basing themselves 

 upon the established results of antecedent 

 sciences, particularly of biology and psy- 

 chology. Yet the natural-science point of 

 view is largely lacking in much of the litera- 

 ture of the social sciences to-day. Many of 

 their devotees seem to think that the world 

 of human society, of social phenomena, is a 

 thing apart, to be studied and understood 

 by itself. This is noticeable, not only in 

 politics and in economics, but also in sociol- 

 ogy, where for a number of years a consid- 

 erable school have openly maintained that 

 the biology and psychology of the individ- 

 ual have little effect upon the group or so- 

 cial life, and that therefore the social sci- 

 ences can not base themselves upon biology 

 and psychology. Even the most notable 

 book published in sociology during the 

 present year — Professor E. M. Maclver's 

 "Community"^ — ^though in many ways a 

 remarkable book, showing both penetration 

 and breadth of view, fails to recognize ex- 

 plicitly the close connection between the 

 natural and social sciences and denies alto- 

 gether that sociology should in part be 

 based upon psychology. 



But two of the social sciences at the pres- 

 ent time may be said to have attained even 

 to a partly adequate method if judged by 

 the standards which have been just set 

 forth. Both these sciences, however, are 

 preliminary and methodological to the 

 more theoretical and applied social sciences. 

 They are anthropology and history. An- 

 thropology, on account of its close connec- 

 tions with zoology, especially in its physical 

 sections, has long had the point of view of 

 the natural sciences, though for a long time 

 2 The Macmillan Company, 1917. 



its work was narrowly individualistic. The 

 new school of social anthropologists, how- 

 ever, have developed a social point of view 

 while making full use at the same time of 

 modern psychology. The achievements and 

 methods of this school we shall touch upon 

 later. Suffice to say that modern anthro- 

 pology has demonstrated its right to a place 

 among the social sciences, and in its care- 

 fully worked out and highly conscious 

 methods it is perhaps the best equipped of 

 all of them. This explains its rapid recent 

 advance. But dealing as it does with hu- 

 man origins in general and with social and 

 cultural origins in particular, its work from 

 any practical viewpoint must be regarded 

 as preliminary to the other social sciences. 

 History, the oldest of the social sciences, 

 has long since worked out an elaborate 

 methodology for the critical determination 

 of events, conditions, and institutions in 

 the human past. But only recently has a 

 new school of historians, led chiefly by Pro- 

 fessor J. Harvey Robinson in this country, 

 attempted to bring history into vital touch 

 with the natural sciences, on the one hand, 

 through anthropology, and with the theo- 

 retical social sciences on the other, through 

 social psychology. From this "new his- 

 tory" we can expect much; but from the 

 standpoint of the theoretical and applied 

 social sciences history is chiefly important 

 as a method of approach to their problems. 

 It is, indeed, of vital importance; and I 

 know of no surer touchstone of sanity in 

 the social sciences than the amount of con- 

 sideration which is accorded to human his- 

 tory. But every historian should know, 

 what every economist, sociologist, and poli- 

 tical scientist does know, that the historical 

 method has not yielded the results which 

 were once hoped from it. By itself the 

 historical method is inadequate from the 

 very nature of recorded human history. 

 The historical evidence of the past is at 



