11. Social Science Versus the Obsession of "Scientism"

11 Social Science Vetsus the Obsession of ~~Scientism" ROBERT STRAusz-HuPE I A discussion of the scientific study of man and society calls for answers to the following questions: First, what properties per taining to man and society are the proper subjects of scientific inquiry? What are the appropriate scientific methods for obtaining valid insights into the social process.?And what precisely can these scientific methods and the insights which they vouchsafe tell us about the future development of society and about possible alter natives among which we are free to choose? The idea that human society can be studied as methodically as any object in nature engaged the disinterested and scientific curi osity of the Greeks. In his history, Herodotus set out to study all branches of humanity irrespective of race and cultural level. He takes people as he finds them, held together by nothing but space and. time. Herodotus, by his superior impartiality, looks, so to speak, from outside in. In his thought, the phenomenon of uni versal humanity is as susceptible to objective investigation as is the course of celestial bodies or the consistency of earth and water. Of religious experience, Herodotus does not speak. For Herodotus, the unity of mankind consists of identities or similarities of be219 220 Scientism and Values havior, and not of a superior meaning derived from a unitary faith and fate.

This is not the place to assess how successful Herodotus was in keeping metaphysics out of his universal history and to what ex tent his value judgments did infiltrate into his superior impartial ity. What matters here is his conception of secular historiography and his methodical separation of consciousness and its object, of man-observing and man-observed. Two thousand years after He rodotus the problem of objectivity was still to trouble social scientists. The question of objectivity in the exploration of social phe nomena can be stated as follows: What is it that we can know about other men, irrespective of the uniqueness of our personal ity, which at once embraces the experience of mankind through out the ages and is kin to all men living and dead, and yet is bio logically finite and cast in the mold of a unique and more or less transitory society, i.e., irrespective of the insoluble dilemma: the brotherhood of man and the terrible isolation of mortal man? As long as humanism and the social sciences walked hand in hand, social scientists saw no need of dispensing with the common bond of humanity as the datum point of their investigations. They knew (or believed they knew) other men because they themselves thought and felt like the subject of their investigations; they knew (or be lieved they knew) what made society go around because they them selves were members of that society, observers, so to speak, in the hands of their own observation. The link between the social sci ences and the humanities was broken by the impact of science upon society as well as upon political and social philosophy.

With the efflorescence, about a hundred and fifty years ago, of the natural sciences, there began a new phase in the long quest of the social sciences for objectivity, for reality. Social scientists now attempted to equate social processes with natural processes and consequently to apply the methodology of the natural sciences to their universe of discourse. It has been overlooked for a long time how much the popularity and political influence of positivism and materialism owed to circumstance and coincidence rather than to Social Science Versus the 0 bsession of UScientism" 221 the aptness of their respective scientific apparatus. Not a few lead ers of these schools of thought and their sectarian offspring, such as, for example, Saint-Simon, Comte, Hackel, and Pareto, were intellectuals who had been attracted to the natural sciences, had failed to make their mark in pure or applied science, and found their way into the social sciences, prophets in another land. F. A.

Hayek, in his CounterRevolution of Science~ traced the influence upon nineteenth-century sociology and political science of Auguste Comte, an engineer who, instead of practicing his craft, theorized on social engineering. He fathered a long line of mechanistic uto pias of society, pedantic, insensitive, and inhuman. There was not then-and there is not now-a sustained and fruitful participation by natural scientists in the pursuit of political and social studies. There was then-and there is now-a lively traffic between their least competent colleagues, many of whom made their living as literary popularizers of science, and social scientists. The methods of the natural sciences were introduced into the social sciences in a haphazard way and often by hands far from highly skilled in either branch of learning. It is not surprising that not a few natural scientists came to look down upon their col leagues at the other end of the academic edifice. At the same time, the impact of science upon society not only brought about those many and profound changes which make up the story of progress, but also altered significantly the status relationship of academic disciplines. The physicist and the chemist, not the sociologist and the economist, have become the symbolic figures of the age. The response of the social sciences to the plight of academic, if not social, inferiority was to embrace all the more fervently the scien tific methodology tout court) namely, the methodology of the nat ural sciences. To be sure, there were "objective" arguments in favor of chucking out the old tools and importing techniques that had so fabulously enriched human knowledge and, in the bargain, given man such vast powers over nature. But the prestige factor stood-and still stands~for much. Science is not only a pursuit; it is also a distinctive posture that commands popular deference far beyond its own domain.

222' :, Scientism and Values II The observations. above should not be taken as implying the rejection of the methods. of the natural sciences as, wholly irrele vant or inapplicable to the study of social phenomena. Scientific method is applicable to all fields of study. It is, however, conceiv able, and highly probable, that the specific methods of the natural sciences do not, and cannot, encompass the range of social phe nomena and will, in some crucial respects, produce results that are as meaningless scientifically as they are harmful humanly and so cially. In brief, the social sciences cannot be expected to do for society what the natural sciences have done for nature until they have developed their own (and not somebody else's) methodology and defined their proper data and criteria of truth, the truth that it is theirs to seek. As theory, pure science is concerned with the reduction of di versity to identity and thus to order. Practical scientific research is concerned with simplification. It is tempting to apply these meth ods to the theory and practice of politics. Indeed, it can be argued that a centralized .authority bent on making plans for an entire society must, because of the bewildering complexity of the data, proceed as does the scientific investigator who arbitrarily reduces the variables of his problem in order to make it manageable. This is the proper laboratory procedure.

But when applied to the problems of human society, the process of simplification, pushed to its logical conclusion, must lead, in theory, to the deletion of those unique and imponderable factors -nuances, if you will-which endow life with zest, flavor, and creativity, and, in practice, to the repression of diversity and thus to tyranny. Indeed, not a few modern dictatorships have sought to derive the warrant for their authority from the alleged precepts of science and to contrive a more or less successful synthesis of official ideologies and modern science. National socialism, al though it did not profess to be a "science," rewarded handsomely those academic toadies who brought "scientific" proof for Hitler's bizarre and spiteful theories on genetics. Marxian socialism does Social Science Versus the 0 bsession of "Scientism" 223 profess to be a science. It has found, in the dominant philosophy of the scientific community, monism, a powerful intellectual and political ally. Nowadays scientific pretension rather than the pro fession of ethical beliefs screens the power urge. This. tendency has led to a progressive devaluation of politic.al ideologies and the rise of the universal ideology of the age, scientism. Scientism has swept all before it, and all the political ideologies. of our times purport to be scientific. They are, in fact, scientistic. The problem of totalitarianism is the reduction of human diversity to uniform ity. It is quite natural that all totalitarian philosophies appeal to the precedents of 'laboratory procedure, for this procedure bestows respectability upon the ironing out of individual idiosyncrasies.

To simplify reality is to abstract. The scientist, confronted by the data of experience, prescinds from a problem those aspects which are not susceptible to measurement and to causal explana tion. His purpose is to explain the phenomenon in terms of causa tion, not of purpose, intention, and values. l Pragmatically, such arbitrary abstraction is. justified. The progress of modern science has been due to its rigorous confinement to the measurable ,aspects of elements of experience which are contained in a causal system. But science does not encompass nor does it profess to encompass all human experience. Science seeks to approximate the truth about the world only within the limitations of specific and rigorously de fined contexts. No true scientist will claim more; no educated lay man should expect more. Yet the vulgarization of science--scien tism-has led many people, including not a few scientists, who have lost sight of the philosophical foundations of their craft, to assert that science holds the key to all problems of human experi ence and that those problems that cannot be dealt with by sim plification or abstraction are either trivial problems or no prob lems at all.

The blight of scientism has spread in all sectors of modem life. It has made its most consequential and dangerous inroads in the field of politics. In the arsenal of demagoguery, scientism is the most powerful secret ideological weapon. The demand of the po litical market for scientific rationalization is great; great are the rewards of the political scientist who will supply it. Thus, for 224 Scientism and Values example, complex international problems can he swept conveni ently under the rug by reducing international relations to eco nomic equations: by assisting the underdeveloped countries eco nomically, the giver wins, if not their good will, then at least a measure of toleration and, in the bargain, fosters the growth of democracy, which, it is alleged, is correlated closely with the rise of average standards of living. By ignoring unwieldy cultural fac tors and deep-seated antagonisms to Western peoples and values, one simplifies the problem of, let us say, India's place in what is called euphemistically the "free world": the West, by adding just the right amount of investment capital to India's government ..

directed economic development, can secure the survival, in India, of parliamentary government and, in world politics, assist India in becoming a counterweight to Red China. Proposals for such a Western "policy" toward India are loaded with eye-filling and vig.. orously formulated statistics. The trouble with this neat solution -which, in the context of scientific economics, is perfectly plausi ble-is that the soul of India is. not the soul of America, that Indi ans cannot be equated with Chinese on the basis of per capita economic productivity, and that, strictly speaking, India is not a nation. III Since the social sciences are concerned with human action, an explanation of data can hardly be satisfying and valid unless it re lates "objective" social phenomena to human purpose, intention, and values. This approach is understandably at odds with that of the natural scientist. It is also at odds with the idea of a centrally planned and, therefore, centrally controlled society. The obstacle to centralized, "scientific" planning is individual idiosyncrasy; i.e., individual purpose, intention, and values. The most expeditious way around this obstacle is to assert that individual purpose, inten tion, and values are scientifically irrelevant or trivial and impervi ous to measurement and, therefore, should be left out of account.

Likewise, it is argued that historical institutions, because they are the traditional repository of purpose, intention, and values, are not SocialScience Versusthe 0 bsessionof UScientism" 225 proper fields of scientific inquiry. In sum, so the "scientific" propo sition runs, the social scientist should not concern himself with what institutions areJ but with their operation, not with what men areJ but with their behavior as members of the group. I do not propose here to examine the position of various schools of behaviorism on what we know about man and society and the relevancy of their findings for the social and "policy" sciences. The behaviorists disagree among themselves on methods of measure ment and, more important still, the meaningfulness of the insights produced by experiment. They appear agreed, however, on the rejection of consciousness as a means for gaining insight into psy chological phenomena and on explaining human phenomena by the measurement of observed behavior and in terms of a causal system in which human consciousness is. not a factor. 2 For the pres ent purpose it suffices that, in this country, it is via behaviorist psychology that the methods of the natural sciences exert their strongest influence upon the social sciences. Let uS now examine briefly the implications of the banishm.ent of consciousness-intro spection-and the reliance on measurement of behavior as the most important, if not the sole, means for obtaining valid insights in social processes.

To begin with, it should be obvious that, from the point of view of the social sciences, human consciousness-introspection-would have to be invented if it did not exist. Thus, for example, the operation of the market would be inconceivable without introspec tion. Not only in the market place but also in the daily exchanges of communal life we act on the assumption that other men think as we do, and, therefore, will act as we will act. In the overwhelm ing majority of instances of daily life it is introspection, and not our observation of other men's behavior, that guides our decisions and triggers our action. The argument that our actIons are merely conditioned reflexes and are not engendered by the workings of our consciousness poses an intriguing language problem; it does not add the slightest whiff of an operable concept to our theoreti cal framework. The fact is that we do assume that we know the other fellow will behave in a manner which is given to us by in trospection. We may be wrong in this assumption. But we act on 226 Scientism and Values it. And this assumption thus becomes. a scientific datum of the social sciences. The circumstance that the data of the social sci ences consist of opinions true and false calls, for a discrete method ology which, although in many respects kindred to the methodolo gies of the natural sciences, must still stand upon its own feet and stake out its own domain. 3 Social scientists who infer patterns of human conduct from in trospection, .and thus rely upon their own consciousness rather than on the no less ambiguous appearance of "behavior," are plainly making use of empirical facts. The progress of modern economics would have been inconceivable without recourse to in trospective experience. "Anthropomorphism, rightly scorned in the natural sciences.as prescientific metaphysics, is justified in eco nomics because economics is about human action." 4 Statistics has its place in the social sciences as it has in any field of scientific in quiry. The question here is one of available data and of the sus ceptibility of available data to measurement rather than one of methodology. Obviously, it would be intellectually satisfying if, for example, political behavior could be measured in such a way that the causal system of politics could be explained mathemati cally. As it is, the statistical tools are powerful, while the available data are either scarce or dubious. Especially in politics a great many more data will have to be collected before their accumulated weight can engage profitably the generous capacity of statistical mathematics. In this country cooperative research, heavily en dowed with zeal, faith in calculating machines, and tax-free funds, has produced a vast literature on the regularities and irregularities of the political animal. But it is doubtful that this earnest effort has produced deeper insights than, let us say, Parkinson's more entertaining investigations, which led him to deduce his famous law.5 To be sure, given the prevalent preDccupation with data gathering and grinding the data thus gathered into statistical con trivances, some progress will be made. But progress in this field will not render measurable what is nonmetrical, i.e., what by its very nature is unknowable through numbers.

It can be argued that reliance on behavioral analogies has led to an alarming atrophy of the powers of introspection. Thus" for exSocial Science Versus the· Obsession of "Scientism" 227 ample, not a few Western statesmen are prone to act on the as sumption that, because a communist leader behaves on certain occasions as such leaders are wont to do, he will prove a pre dictable and manageable quantity in every world political equa tion. Mr. Mikoyan eats and dresses as we do, smiles at more or less corny jokes, and, intermittently, kisses babies before the camera and cherishes. peace and the middle-class ideal of business as usual. Since the average Soviet citizen displays a well-docu mented interest in electrical refrigerators and cars, the Soviet rulers will seek to satisfy their demand for semidurable goods, cut down on military hardware, and settle down to the status quo just as our statesmen would do were tIley in the Soviets' shoes.

These cliches reflect all that is most shallow in reliance on both behavioral analogy and introspective analogy. Our "statesman," because he has abandoned an ethical position to empiricism, is smitten with deafness to the voice of intuition and with blindness to observable facts: he understands anything except the inwardness of political conduct. IV The aesthetical element of experience is not susceptible to measurement. Yet there is an intimate relation between aesthetics and politics, hetween aesthetics and economics, and between aes thetics and morals. Artistic creativity and prevailing tastes.in paint ing, the plastic arts, literature, and music are indices of social sta bility and national power. These indices cannot be expressed in numbers. Yet are they less relevant than, let us say, indices of coal, steel, and uranium production? In brief, social scientists must be concerned with man and his fate, man and his idiosyncrasies. 6 So cial scientists, too, are men. At the present stage of imperfection, there is· but faint hope that we will be able to deduce from the variety of experience mathematical laws and constants.

It is unscientific-or shall we say "scien.tistic"-to insist upon applying the methods of the n.atural sciences categorically to the fields of sociology, economics, and politics. The attempt to do so not only does not advance research, but stultifies it. Yet without a 228 Scientism and Values vigorous advance in the systematic scholarly techniques for ana lyzing and solving social problems, the increasing bewilderment of modern men will elude rational treatment, and the concrete result of so much well-me.aning effort and ink spilt will be merely an other nail-a rusty theoretical one-in the coffin of the old order -the good and the bad of it-,-and not the establishment of a pre sumably better order. At no time in human history has there been a more crying need for bringing the unsentimental scholarly out look to bear upon politics than now. There is just a faint chance that we can do so before the destruc tive forces which now impinge upon the political and social struc ture of the Western world have done their work. We can discern now on the intellectual horizon the rise, albeit faint, of a new constellation: the growing awareness of policy-makers of the need for a genuinely theoretical-not pseudoscientific-approach to pol itics and the progress toward the development of a pure political theory, based on a firm grasp of human nature. In a way, the bumptiousness of the scientific ~laims advanced by diverse "scien tistic" ideologies and their dismal, sometimes bloody failures to redeem these claims have cleared the decks for the advent of the true science of politics. The need for such a science of politics is not a mere matter of academic concern. What is at stake is, in the most literal sense, the survival of our civilization.

In one of its deepest meanings, the world crisis is a dispute about political organization. Regardless of the historical roots of the present conflict and of the contending philosophical concepts, all existing· states are confronted by the need for reorganization. Without such reorganization, the purpose, intentions, and values of our society are untranslatable into those actions which must be taken in order to defend it against the dangers from without and the eroding forces from within. Such reorganization may have to bear on th~' fundamentals of the political structure; or it may call for the realignment of existing institutions; or the existing insti tutions, sound as they may be, may require operational improve ments. Whenever men talk politics, they argue, as a matter of course, about personalities, the management of public institutions, the Social Science Versus the 0 bsession of UScientism" 229 usefulness or obsolescence of existing establishments, and the re form of political and administrative machinery or the creation of new machinery. The discussion of personalities slips easily into emotive terms, and there is, in politics, a proper place for emotion.

Management and organizational structure, however, can be dis cussed llleaning£ully only upon the identification of problems, the assembly of relevant facts, and the analysis of possible solutions. It is one of the most significant symptoms of the world crisis that our knowledge of public problems is either vague or generalized. At best, the usefulness of our institutions is assessed in impressionistic terms and, more often than not, the stated purpose of the institu tion, as, for example, the French Chamber of Deputies under the Fourth Republic, is confused with its performance. Public interest centers upon the generalized theory of an institution rather than upon its reality, not to speak of its "organizational yield." Hence, improvements are mostly guided by intuitive judgments and ac complished by accident. The problem of reorganization is threefold. All societies require, although in different degrees, reorganization in order to achieve good government under modern conditions of technological change, economic development, demographic growth, psychologi cal understanding, and human freedom. Most existing social and political organizations represent some kind of compromise be tween traditional institutional concepts and the satisfaction of the power urge. Neither the institutions nor their management satisfies the requirements of efficient organization. Efficient organization is not tantamount to good government. Organizational efficiencyand political ethics are, however, interdependent variables. Good gov ernment is a contradictio in adjectQ without consideration of pur pose, intention, and values. "Good" government seeks to maximize the "organizational yield" of public institutions.

Secondly, the various national or subnational societies have broken out of their historic isolation. During the last hundred years, nations and civilizations have become increasingly interde pendent. There is little doubt that this interdependence will con tinue to grow unless adverse economic and military developments intervene. Consequently, it is necessary to find organizational 230 Scientzsm and Values forms which will provide for the effective collaboration between different societies that are dependent upon one another but lack the commensurate psychological cohesion. This international "growing together" requires a deepened understanding of insti tutional similarities and differences. Such understanding can be derived only from sure methods of comparison. The actual process of "growing together" requires guidance, hence the need for a theory of institutional synthesis. In the absence of such a theory, peoples will not be able to determine which institution should be abandoned, enlarged, taken over, reformed or developed jointly, and the process of "growing together" might be reversed into a disorderly and dangerous melee.

Thirdly, the global ideological conflict would not be global ex cept for the circumstance that all members of humanity now have become interrelated and can communicate virtually instantly with one another. The leading societies are in disagreement about the ways by which the world society is to be organized. This disagree ment is rendered acute by the fact that the contending arguments are almost entirely irrational. Each contending ideology has its own solution. We believe that our solution is the better one, and, for diverse reasons, it probably is. But if actual events can supply us guidance, we have not developed the methodogy for presenting our arguments so effectively and rationally that they will invite acceptance by all men-and, incidentally, considered and serene acceptance by those who now accept them somewhat hesitantly on faith. We hold strong opinions about political organization, but, unfortunately, those notions are convincing only to ourselves and to people who "think as we do." We cannot prove that we are right, for-among other reasons-we have failed to work out our self-evident criteria.

v The purpose of political-organizational schemes, at least in so far as they are stated to the public, is to achieve a higher degree of freedom. The precise meaning of the term "freedom" is sub ject to argument. This argument will continue as, long as political Social Science Versus the Obsession of "Scientism" 231 society exists, remains, articulate, and is capable of disagreement. Freedom is an undefined abstraction which refers to many differ ent and often incongruous situations. It is in the nature of a syn optic description, like the term, "health," except that it refers to a far larger number of elements. In much the same way as a dying man still has healthy organs, freedom is never completely extin guished in all human areas. Just as the disease of a vital organ ter minates health, so nonfreedom or too little freedom denotes the lack of freedom as such. Thus, freedom is not merely a matter of degrees, but also of quality.

Whenever we speak of "freedom," we really imply "more" or "less" freedom. Thus, we are dealing with a notion which is in herently measurable, or which, in any case, contains many measur able elements. It is possible to measure freedom. 7 Keeping in. mind the distinction between the basic types of freedom, we would then have to measure: (1) the legal constraints imposed upon an individual's freedom of action; (2) the capabilities at the individual's disposal and rates of change of constraints and capabilities; (3) the utilization of these capabilities both in terms of de facto use and of responsible behavior; (4) the human results of such capabilities utilized. Freedom is far broader than simple political rights, however im portant those may be. It can be considered independently of spe cific aspects of political organization, as it must be if it is indeed a structural element of society as, a whole. But, in addition to pay ing attention to the intents, causes, modes, and limits of individual behavior, we also must know the results of such action. It is, after all, not the institution which counts, but its yield. Once we know the yield, we possess a yardstick for evaluating organizational and institutional structure and performance. How much freedom did the institution produce? And at what price? This is the heart of the matter.

232 Scientism and Values VI I have dwelt on the hypothetical example of the "measure ment of freedom" because it seems to me as being characteristic of the problems~the real problems-which are the concern of the political scientist. It illustrates the need for a theory and a meth odology (including a sociometry that does not plagiarize methods of measurement devised for an inanimate ordre de grandeur). The science of politics is as· yet poorly armed for dealing meaningfully with problems that are incontestably its own and, more impor tantly, matter crucially to all peoples here and now. Formal democracy is. an essential prerequisite, but not the ful fillment of freedom. Dictatorships do receive popular support. Our wonderment at this incontrovertible fact is nourished by the as sumption that dictatorships violate all aspirations to freedom, while democracy satisfies them all. This is not so.

Dictatorship has many advantages. As a rule, it has a sense of direction and,mission. Dictatorship is served by genuine dedica tion. Dictatorship suffers less than does democracy from anomy in decision-making. Under dictatorship, most people are less bored, regardless of the fact that bustling dedication may not serve a good cause and that social zest is kept alive at the cost of indi vidual privacy. No doubt the overcommitment to formal democracy and to the satisfaction of predominantly material interests has impeded the progress of liberty. The free world has been talking about rights, equality of men and peoples, the welfare of large numbers, and economic security. All these things are important. But we have not talked about obligation and discipline, emotional security, wise and ethical choices, happiness, and creativity. Democracy has yielded all too easily to the depreciation of its currency. It has been content to "adjust" too many of its values and institutions to mundane pressures and intellectual fashions. It has been easy,' therefore, for the exponents of various naturalistic philosophies and psychologies to conceive of democratic institu tions as empty of moral purpose, as mere stables of the human ani mal. We should have tried, and we now must try, to build liberty Social Science Versus the Obsession of UScientism" 233 for the moral person. Perhaps it is unfair to say that we have ne glected to preoccupy ourselves with the human problem in its true dimension. Our bodies are better cared for than they ever were, but our minds are anguished and our creative powers stifled. Free dom cannot be won and preserved like a jar of marmalade. Free dom, in its deepest meaning, is a creative process. The free world has still a positive mission.

It is the task of the science of politics under freedom to develop the disciplines and to fashion the tools of creative freedom. Scien tism has devoured a goodly portion of democracy's intellectual and moral patrimony. The science of politics has to replace much that has been lost to the academic hosts of the scientistic fury. Perhaps the very challenge of the times~a mortal challenge-will call forth, in society as a whole, recuperative forces and, in the halls of social science, a responsible and competent concern with the search for truth. NOTES 1. Aldous Huxley, Science~ Liberty and Peace (New York, 1959), pp. 32-35. 2. Edna Heidebreder, Seven Psychologies (New York, 1933), pp. 263-270. 3. F. A. Hayek, The CounterRevolution of Science (Glencoe, Ill., 1952), p.34. 4. Leland B. Yeager, "Measurement as Scientific Method in Economics," The A merican Journal of Economics and Sociology ~ XVI, No.4, 344-345.

5. C. Northcote Parkinson, Parkinson's Law or the Pursuit of Progress (London, 1958). 6. For a perceptive critique of social "laws" and the meaningfulness of cor relation of social "variables," see kenneth Boulding, The Organizational Revolution (New York, 1953), 76-77, and Ruth Benedict, "Social Strati fication and Political Power," in R. Bendix and S. M. Lipset, eds., Class~ Status and Power (Glencoe, 111., 1956), p. 608. 7. I am indebted to Stefan T. Possony for a concise statement of the prob lem of "measuring" freedom in his mimeographed The Meaning and Measurement of Freedom, Foreign Policy Research Institute (University of Pennsylvania, 1957). Editor's Comment Some critics will question the possibility of measuring free dom; others will perhaps accept it, but wonder about this new "scientism"-----the measurement of values t.hat ought not to be 234 Scientism and Values subject to yardsticks .. However, there are indeed fairly simple ways of measuring freedom that will not degrade the entity being measured. For instance, we have statistics at our disposal recording year after year how many individuals, families, and people in vari ous occupations, choose freedom-they leave from behind the Iron Curtain. We have such data for East Germany, Hungary, Red China, Tibet, and other areas where individuals make a choice from among relative degrees of freedom-such as, for example, between the not-quite-so-oppressive communism in Tito's Yugo slavia and their opportunity to escape into Italy.

Moreover, we can measure in meaningful units, if we want to, the time persons have to spend in officesof the .authorities in order to get permission to migrate, to leave a country, to change occu pation or residence. All these important segments of a man's daily life are related to freedom. American readers may not be able to see their importance at once because they yet know so few controls over their personal lives. All we meant here is that just as well as the UN can study the degrees of censorship of the press in various countries on a comparative basis, we might try to get similar data for other areas of human freedom, not just the journalist's. H. Schoeck.