February 19, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



291 



college in molding and enriching public 

 opinion in social and economic lines. Each 

 college should have at least a good teacher 

 of economics and social science, who, with 

 a good working library, could readily meet 

 these requirements. 



Status of Instruction in Social and Eco- 

 nomic Science in Universities: J. H. 

 Hageety, Ohio State University, Colum- 

 bus, Ohio. 



The first thing that is to be noticed is 

 the crude, imperfect and illogical classifi- 

 cation of the so-called social sciences. So 

 indefinite is our classification and so im- 

 perfect our nomenclature that a layman 

 has hard work to discover the difference 

 between socialism and sociology, political 

 economy and civilization, and does not 

 know what anybody means when he says 

 'political science.' There are three distinct 

 lines of instruction in most universities, but 

 they are so confused in their classification 

 as sometimes not to be readily discovered. 

 These are politics, economics and sociology. 

 Frequently all of these are classified under 

 'sociology,' again under 'economics' and 

 again under 'political science.' In reality 

 the terms 'social science' and 'political sci- 

 ence' should never be used, biit 'sociology' 

 and 'politics' instead. A brief classification 

 of the special sciences would bring them 

 under the following main heads : I., ethics ; 

 II., economics; III., polities, and IV., soci- 

 ology. There should be a thorough classifi- 

 cation and an orderly arrangement of the 

 social sciences in each university. This 

 would give a pedagogical as well as a 

 scientific unity to the work. 



Another very important condition notice- 

 able in American universities is a tendency 

 toward the applied scieiices, or a tendency 

 to study the facts of human society more 

 and to engage in less speculation about 

 them. In political economy, for instance, 

 investigators and instructors dwelt almost 



entirely on the theories and principles of 

 the subject. Now they are recognizing that 

 human society is a laboratory of economics 

 and sociology and they are inclined to do 

 laboratory work. It is somewhat different 

 in the study of sociology, for being a very 

 young science it is yet passing throiigh the 

 period of controversy, speculation and 

 theory. An investigation of the courses 

 presented in fifteen of the leading universi- 

 ties of the West, classified as nearly as could 

 be under theoretical and applied sciences, 

 shows that in economics the number of 

 applied is twice as many as the number 

 dealing in pure theory, while in sociology 

 the ratio of theoretical to practical is that 

 of three to one. Economics, then, is tend- 

 ing toward the status of a natural science 

 based upon classified phenomena. 



There is a tendency for instruction in the 

 social sciences to fit people for the practical 

 affairs of life. Some of the universities 

 have gone so far as to establish schools for 

 commercial education, especially for the 

 fitting of students for the business world. 

 "While many of these schools or courses are 

 rather crude or padded, they strongly indi- 

 cate the trend of economic study. The 

 time will come when men will be prepared 

 for the business world just as definitely as 

 they are now prepared for law, medicine, 

 engineering or pedagogy. In the same 

 manner the study of politics will prepare 

 individuals for the political administra- 

 tion of affairs. Sociology very early be- 

 gan to prepare experts for the administra- 

 tion of charitable and correctional affairs, 

 and this is what ought to have occurred 

 many years ago in the study of the social 

 sciences. 



While one should not ignore the value of 

 the study of theory or of principles, years 

 of time have been wasted over the fine-spun 

 theories of wages, interest, rent, value, etc., 

 which might have been used profitably in 

 finding out the actual conditions of human 



