12. Social Science As Autonomous Activity

12 Social Science As Autonomous Activity HENRY S. KARIEL This essay :If: seeks to delineate an approach to understanding human society. Those who partake in this approach are persuaded that, far from trying to construct some specific social order or learning how to fit men into it, they prefer public policies, which will provide the conditions for the unimpeded pursuit of happi ness. They duly respect the various opinions and interests of indi vidual men. Yet their work indicates that more is involved, for it contains uneasily coexisting elements-an on-duty scientific one and an off-duty moralistic one. Both elements embody values. To the extent that these values are in conflict and press on to victory, both social science and liberal-democratic institutions are threat ened, for they require one another. Survival of neither seems likely if either an unqualified science or an unqualified moralism triumphs. If it could be shown that liberal-democratic theory is unrelated to the work pursued and therefore fails to confine the scientific quest, while, at the same time, much of social science is impelled to reach out so as to incorporate liberal-democratic insti*While responsibility for the ideas here set forth is fully mine, I have benefited from discussionswith three members of the Society of Fellows, Harvard University: George Kateb, Peter M. Ray, and Franklin M. Fisher. I am also grateful to the Western Political Quarterly for permission to draw on my article, liThe New Order of Mary Parker Follett," published September, 1955.

235 236 Scientism and J1alues tutions, it may be obvious why today it is far less pertinent to re state professed moral sentiments than to retrace some of the value assumptions which give meaning, coherence, ,and prestige to re search. I The research here specificall y focused on is concerned, in brief, with the construction and the testing of abstract concep tional systems composed of neutral terms which are seen as cap~ble, at least in principle, of relating every effective variable. Postulating all social forces to be in a state of natural balance within a self-rectifying and self-sufficient order, it is committed to a norm which allows reference to existing communities. As an in strumental science, it is believed to be able to determine how whatever is variable might be economically moved toward the norm. Because it systematically functionalizes human goals, the only norms which restrain it are, ideally, the agreed-upon rules of social science. This capsule characterization begs for elaboration.

What is becoming increasingly clear is that a traditional empha sis of social science on distinguishing between the degrees of ex cellence of social institutions, historical regimes, public policies, or individual doctrines is being replaced by a stress on the formula tion of an architectonic descriptive theory of social behavior.! This stress, one not without antecedents in the history of ideas, is mani fest in a concern for the progressive refinement of operational methods. Identified by an array of vague labels which significantly suggest the convergence of various disciplines-labels such as func tionalism, sociometry, operationalism, equilibrium analysis, topo logical psychology, social field theory, social geometry, homeostatic model construction, or even sociopsychobiology-truly synthetic knowledge is being earnestly pursued and, so it would appear, re spectably endowed. Such a body of knowledge is to give formal expression to rela tionships between sensed phenomena. These phenomena, con nected by a network of logical or quantitative notations, are not Social Science As Autonomous Activity 237 examined for their intrinsic merits. They are kept from becoming the object of discourse. The aim is not the disclosure and objecti fication of equivocal meanings and values, but, on the contrary, their systematic elimination. The remaining theoretical structure, deliberately removed from experience, is to constitute a positive natural science o£society.

The obstacles to its formulation, it is conceded, seem insuper able because they have been so firmly built into the mind of West ern man that even as he attempts to reflect upon them they stand in his way. The very character of thought and language allows for misleading distinctions between value-attributing subject and pas sive object, between substance and function. These distinctions are believed to keep thought from becoming objective, permitting it to correspond, not to the structure of the forces at large in the world, but to the ever-varying desires of individuals. 2 The need, therefore, is to escape the prison of a language incorporating values, to cease using quality-ascribing adjectives which intrigu ingly hint at the existence of essentials, and to center at last on dynamic processes. It becomes important to extinguish symbols useful only when the channels of communication are not clear, when redundancies are required to catch our attention or over come noises on the line. The residual system will embrace all meaningful facts of social life, living up to Galileo's great vision: Philosophy is written in that vast book which stands ever open before our eyes, 1 mean the universe; but it cannot be read until we have learnt the language and become familiar with the character in which it is written. It is written in. mathematical language, and the letters are triangles, circles and. other geometrical figures, without which means it is humanly impossible to comprehend a single word.3 This geometric design, once apprehended in its fullness, cannot be defiled by historical change. As an absolute, it will be radically unhistorical, compressing past and future into a timeless frame.

Thus, in psychology, to introduce but one example, the informed will repress all dramatic language and shift to a functional inter238 Scientism and Values pretation of personality. As M. Brewster Smith has authoritatively written,4 Modern psychology, historical or otherwise, is in fact overwhelmingly functional. The dominant strain is oriented toward a model of the organism as a self-regulating system and falls naturally into the use of terms like homeostasis, equilibrium and adjustment; while the marginal influence of Gestalt theory leads to parallel emphasis on the field determination of phenomenal properties or behavior tendencies. Formerly, when the emphasis had been on habits, traits, change, and action, only the historical approach would do. Today, accord ing to Smith, it is fruitful to transcend specific histories, to lay bare a scheme defining the individual's nonhistorical, extempora neous behavioral dispositions. Such a scheme-one claimed not merely for a strain of psychology-will be a perfect accounting system. It will fully take care of all contingencies, clearly showing that perception of miracle, novelty, or accident must be a symptom of faulty vision or a function of an uncontrolled body of impulses.

It is backed by the notion that everything scientifically significant is attached, determined, and at hand. Though much meaningful data may remain hidden until duly approached, all of it is em phatically present, more or less deeply embedded in the present state of man's development. Through the proper method it might be made to yield truthful correlations-eorrelationsl which have held in the past as they must surely hold in the future. The real can thus be forced to disclose itself as the ideal while, simultane ously, the ideal can be forced to disclose itself as the real. II Of course, social scientists are not conspiring to found a state which, however unrealized, they believe to be woven into the na ture of things. To borrow a phrase from American public law, they are merely engaged in parallel action. They labor as if set to actualize a holistic system of elementary relations. And they rest whenever their approach dissolves the peculiarities they encounter, SocialScienceAs AutonomousActivity 239 revealing them to be congruent and organized. They are satisfied to the extent that they establish a necessary conneCtion between society and nature. They know that a concern with an unrealiz able world must irresponsibly devitalize the scientific activity of developing hypotheses which deal successfully with men in motion.

It may seem, deceptively, that their activity will cause human values to be shunned, that the norms so obviously present in the social field under investigation will be disregarded. Yet, in fact, values will be given their credit when shown to be functions of an efficacious system, one which is at once empirically describable and· susceptible to an objective ordering. This is the case even though at present there are no satisfactory quantitative terms to designate degrees of functionality without postulating.value predi cates. But while it is true, as David Easton has seen,5 that it has not yet been possible "to reduce the complex power relations. of society to the necessary numerical quantities, and [that] there is little pros pect that in the foreseeable future it will be in a position to do so," the ideal remains. A genuinely neutral model should connect values with the real substructure of social forces, group pressures, and individual drives. Values cherished because man has exercised his reason in the light of his knowledge of the past are not autono mous determinants; they can gain the status. of such determinants only when recognized as ideologies, as verbal structures tied to more fundamental data. Thus values must be identified with the substructure of behavior, with the real determinants of thought and action. Human ideals must not be set off from facts, but be equated with them, losing their distinctive qualities. Or, more accurately, they must be exhibited in a new setting which makes it clear that they had actually never merited distinction in the first place. In this framework they will be stabilized because realized.

Their new setting will provide full correlations., excepting nothing from its grasp, necessarily handling all meaningful behavior, in cluding the norms and purposes. which nonscientific preconcep tions respect as incommensurable, unstable, and variable. The job for social sciencethen becomes,as, a·matter of course, one of reducing existing instabilities and variations. In this way, the significant facts about social structures will be revealed. Theo240 Scientism and Values dore M. Newcomh has sympathetically reviewed what this is likely to imply, for example, for psychology: There is no harder lesson for the psychologist to learn, probably, than that of viewing persons as functionaries in a group structure rather than as psychological organisms-i.e., as parts rather than as wholes, and as parts which, within limits, are interchangeable. Once this lesson is learned, however, the facts of social structure become available; a social system is seen as made up of differentiated parts, the orderly relationships among which, rather than the personal identity of which, become the major object of concern. 6 Far more broadly, Hannah Arendt, noting the implications of functionalizing the purposive, dramatic content of intellectual cat egories, has shown how it has become possible, for example, to identify Hitler and Jesus because functionally their roles were indistinguishable. 7 Such linking of variables becomes essential to a science intent on dealing with all components of a social field as role-playing functionaries so as to make society explicable. Full explication requires treating society as a system whose parts, in theory if not in momentarily stubborn fact, "make sense," all being duly related, complementing and balancing one another.

On the basis of this assumption of the natural harmony of struc tural components" the quest for knowledge may proceed. By the traditional method of (1) postulating a hypothesis which might economically relate variables, (2) following through by making de ductions, (3) checking whether the hypothesis corresponds to sense experience, and (4) accepting, amending, or rejecting the hypothe sis-by this method reality may be known. 8 Hypotheses, assuredly, may have to be reversed by "factual reality." Yet, it should be noted, only ,after agreement is reached as to what is meant by "facts" do facts actually have the final say: facts, it is held, must be so constituted as to leave manifest traces before they can be given a voice. The social scientist's hypotheses----devised to lead him to uni formities of behavior-will permit rational, scientific control only of such facts as take their place in his conceptual order of uni formly related, coexisting parts. His very approach is designed to Social Science As A utonomous Activity 241 permit nothing capricious, unique, or dysfunctional to slip through. When his postulational system makes for the appropriate discriminations, it is a pure theory, one through which it is possi ble to discern all the dynamically interacting facts of social reality.

Thus, the concern of social science is inescapably with the paten cieg and the actualities of reality. It is, to use Nietzsche's apt phrase, concerned with "quantities of will," with power-its extent and its use. III The theory giving integrity to such concerns is not, of course, to be confused with any concrete society. It is merely an analytical model. Nevertheless, it is believed to identify the character of nat ural conditions, the impetus immanent in historical processes. While it may appear that no particular process is thus valued over any other, a formal valuation does emerge. The notion that ','a dys function is a condition, or state of affairs that (1) results from the operation (including in the term operation mere persistence) of a structure of a given unit through time and (2) lessens the adapta tion or adjustment to the unit's setting, thus making for the lack of persistence of the unit as defined of which the structure con cerned is a part or aspect" 9-this notion leaves the underlying re spect for integration and balance scarcely in doubt. Sound research must concern itself with the specification of ties which provide for the system's unity, which enable it to cohere and persist. The task of social studies is thus easily defined: it is to identify the social structure and determine what is functional. It is to gain knowledge of the factors which engage what is idle, attract what is distracted, enlist what is weary. It is to search for the conditions of instability, the prerequisites of stability. It is to restore upset balances, resolve conflicts, heal sore spots, and-most important, perhaps-remove blocks to understanding.

To be sure, the knowledge thus accumulated can be used to achieve a nonconservative end. But such an achievement, certainly possible, could not be certified as scientific at a time when the social world is simply assume~ to be nothing but ,a fundamentally closed, boundary-maintaining, and internally harmonious system.

242 Scientism and Values Whether the social scientist intuits universals-assuming the risks of Burckhardt, Spengler, Weber, and Benedict-or determines, more empirically, just what to do in order to ensure a system's perpetuity,IO he is directed to engage in patterning deviant ele ments, and this all the more energetically as he identifies knowl· edge with the realization of an immanent "true state of affairs," with what would spontaneously occur in the social world were all impediments removed. As long as this approach remained purely formal and analytical, as it did in the relativistic, comparative analyses of Burckhardt and Weber, it also left unsettled just what the specific impedim,ents to the ideal might be. Hence, discussion about them was not fore· closed. But the abridgement of discussion is, fostered as a substan· tive definition of a disequilibrium is implied. It would be more tedious than difficult to show how massively this is the case, with what readiness undesirable deviants, are actually being identified: they are widely seen as the conflicts and displacements which have flowered thanks to modern man's complex industrial society. Only a deeply prejudiced person, it is made to appear, will fail to dis cern that whatever man's twentieth-century opportunities and goods, the present is a painful era of community disruption, com· plicated politics, and endless factional crises. If this offered diag nosis is far too broad, it is believed to cover so many contemporary relationships that the application of social skills, of knowledge about human relations, becom,es imperative indeed. And this knowledge, at its best, is seen as th,e product of social science.

There being no question regarding what substantively consti· tutes social delinquencies-the nature of the pathological being virtually self-evident ll-social science may rightly apply its knowl edge and its methods, working to discover how individuals might be moved with speed and efficiency toward the common, healthy goal. It becomes credible to argue that psychologists should seek to provide a basic science of human thinking, character, skill learning, motives, conduct, etc., which will serve all the sciences of man (e.g., anthropology, sociology, economics, government, education, Social Science As A utonomous Activity 243 medicine, etc.) in much the same way and to the same extent that biology now serves the agricultural and medical sciences.I2 The ends of just government, it may be inferred, are so fixed that the scientist-governor may furnish the means .. Moreover, the laws of psychology may be applied precisely as agronomists and physi cians apply the laws of biology: to maximize food production and prolong life.

Like the interest of the engineer, that of the social scientist may consequently center on the means to achieve given ends, to treat the diseases of the body politic. Knowing the common good, he will be prepared and subsidized to perfect the devices for gaining con sensus on it and to aid in its attainment. Thus, as social therapists and policy scientists will show, in the language of Harold D. Lasswell,13a "lively concern ... for the problem of overcoming the divisive tendencies of modern life and of bringing into existence a more thorough integration of the goals and methods of public and private action," politics itself will become infused by science. As this infusion proceeds, a convergence of· social science disci plines is only to be expected. On the assumption, articulated by John Gillin,14 that "the social or behavioral sciences could do with a bit more order in their house," integration is being urged. Social scientists are invited to join up and work on an orderly "science of social man"-one which requires, according to Gillin,15 that social scientists suspend those competitive urges which impel them to distinguish themselves, that they suspend behavior having the "tendency on occasion . . . of cluttering the field with a variety of ostensibly theoretical statements .... " It seems that "it must per haps be remembered that we live in a culture which also values 'cooperation with others' and 'self-discipline.' " Mark A. May, as head of Yale University's Institute of Human Relations, has logi cally followed this theme through: 16 Our particular academic culture [May said during a roundtable dis cussion on "Integration of the Social Sciences"] tends to reward rugged individualism. . . .

244 Scientism and Values I am a strong believer in rewards and punishments. The prescrip tion for getting more integration in the social sciences is to reward heavily all activities that look in that direction, provided that they are solid and sound and promising. It is important, also to reduce the rewards that have been so heavily attached to specialization .... The practical application of this theory lies in the hands of those who sit at the controls of the system of rewards and punishments in colleges, universities, foundations, and scientific societies. IV United in their aim of constructing and testing a behavioral science, social scientists are induced to engage in oper.ations which are not checked, theoretically, by anything but their own power to be operative. Of course, prescriptions for social health do not countenance every kind of action. Limitations are imposed by the very purposes for which social science techniques are brought to bear on society. The techniques themselves being wholly neutral, they take on the color of the objective for which they are used.

The goodness of the objective being granted, implementation may properly proceed. But the value of the posited objective is itself defined only by its capacity to fulfin a function scientifically determinable. An ade quate social science cannot credit human objectives as irreducible, for they are deemed to lie within its own domain of means and are, therefore, considered to be amenable to functionalization. They are understood as instruments of, not as guides to, human aspirations, as tools for survival and mastery. The final test of their validity is the very one that is applied to the constructs of science, with the result that myths, ideals, ideologies, and scientific formulations all acquire identity. To the extent that scientific knowledge of the links between social phenomena is certain and trustworthy, such knowledge becomes knowledge of objectives. Seemingly a sharp distinction between the scientific formula tions which order the world and the world itself remains. But when it is assumed that the ordering formulations are an inherent part of nature, wrested from it by the scientific effort to control emergencies, to conquer chance, and to make life liveable, they Social Science As A utonomous Activity 245 retain no independence save that arbitrarily assigned them. They are legitimate only because they happen to be potent, efficient, or instrumental. All structuring of the natural world-including, of course, of the social world, of the behavior and conduct of indi vidual persons-is based on the belief that those scientific con structs which apparently transcend natural behavior cannot justly be distinguished from it. They are but a form of behavior, a kind of factual datum essentially indistinct from those passions which drive men to seek power and satisfy their need systems. To control constructs themselves, to impose a check on science, is to cut into its capacity for 'experimental action. It is at once unnatural and suicidal, for it delimits science, accepting not its own reason, but one which professes to transcend it. Such adherence to metaphysi cal dogma would be self-deceptive when not used as a device for deceiving others. Those who wish to rid themselves of deception and act in a spirit of objectivity must exercise their will-pre sumably their good will. I7 They must impose upon the social flux, set men in motion, inter~ct with their data, learn by doing, verify by testing.

Knowledge of laws defining social relations in their natural, untouched, and untested state is impossible. To be sure, one is frequently compelled to make the attempt to verify hypotheses by conducting tests in an environment smaller than the one for which the hypotheses are hoped to hold true. Or one may project from past or distant situations about which facts are readily avail able for correlations. Thes,e two methods are indeed conventional and serviceable, yielding knowledge sufficiently exact for such practical purposes as navigating through storms, finding oil under the soil, anticipating the demands of consum.ers, or predicting the choices of voters. Yet, in terms of the ideal of science, both methods are troublesome all the same. The first assumes that identical causes will tend to produce identical effects, that outside the laboratory nothing is likely to intervene and make effects disproportionate to their causes. The well-recognized trouble here is that in human affairs (and not merely in human affairs) some things sometimes do manage to intervene, however minutely, and that consequently-if the truth is to be known and if only the 246 Scientism and Values testable is admitted as truth-the progressive extension of the laboratory becomes an imperative. Harold D. Lasswell's observa tions are to the point: 18 The principal limitation [to the experimental approach] is that many of the most elegant findings can only be transferred to other labora tories. They cannot be transferred to field situations because there is no technique of demonstrating in the field the degree in which the conditions assumed as constant in the laboratory do in fact occur.

For this reason, "bridges need to be built between laboratory situations and field situations,." It becomes a necessary "refine ment ... to take the laboratory design into the field and to apply it to a whole community context. In such a setting many 'of the procedures devised under laboratory· conditions take on new meaning." The field, in effect transformed into laboratory, may "then be explored more intensively in order to identify the variables that account for the deviation. This can be done by applying more laboratory-type measures at the proper spots and by instituting a program of 'probers,' 'pre-tests,' 'interventions,' and 'appraisals.' " The second method, that of extr.apolation, may be seen in its consequences as but a variant of the first, assuming as it does that variables which coexisted in the past will tend to do so in the future. The experience, however rare, that they will not, that even tendencies may be upset, indicates the essential shortcoming, in terms of the scientific ideal, ofa method which is satisfied with statistical correlations.I 9 "The infinite variety of causal sequences to which every act and event in history is related," Reinhold Niebuhr has pointed out,20 "makes almost every correlation of causes sufficiently plausible to be immune to compelling chal lenge." The ideal of empirical science is exact knowledge on the basis of which men might act without further consideration of alternatives, without further study, research, reflection, or debate.

Before the scientist will be justified in claiming that particular conditions have such objective existence, he must have exercised Social Science As A utonomous Activity 247 full control. Unless he has, his discoveries. cannot be the final ground for action. When his formulations are nevertheless accepted as the final ground for action, the assumption must be that his knowledge is complete, that the real problems and their natural, necessary solutions are known. To act on the basis of such knowledge is in fact to order variables in the light of what is conceived as in dubitably real or true. Such ordering. constitutes the exercise of control. Since it is possible to obtain certain empirical knowledge only of those relations which men have transfused by their will, which men have actually constructed and in which they can ulti mately encounter only themselves, empirical science demands. the exercise of the will, a grappling with a nature which insists on having its intrinsic properties. It becomes exasperating and chal lenging to realize that speculative, reflective knowledge of the world, because of the all-pervasiveness of bias, because man is a determined creature, can be only coincidentally accurate. Being so much part of nature, man cannot truly find out what it is. He cannot look upon it with objectivity; he cannot assess it from above; he cannot gain a disinterested view of it.

But by no means does this require him to give up his quest for knowledge. He feels. free to reinterpret the quest, to make it be come one for survival within nature, one for natural power over the competing forces of life. Thus, the purpose of science be comes a pseudo purpose: control, not in reference to a transcend ing objective, but for its own sake. Thereby science, equated with spontaneous right action, gains autonomy, a condition not likely to he frowned upon when its ethos is wholly identified with a rationale for liberal-democratic institutions. 21 It becomes. self-re liant and self-justifying; it is measured, not against a higher order of reality, not against standards anteceding the conventions of empirical science, but against an ideal which values the capacity to exercise power, to be effective, to flex one's instruments (in cluding ideologies and myths) for the control of nature, of society, and of man. Thus a genuine science is manipulative knowledge; it is a body of concepts viewed as valid when they yield results in 248 Scientism and Values application. Indeed, a true order of being, an objective model of nature, is not one which man gets out of nature, but one which he imputes to it. The main scientific task, therefore, is to make of nature what one will. Objective knowledge being foreclosed for nature is undeniably obstinate-subjective .action takes its place.

In so far as science requires an attitude of radical skepticism toward relations not yet fixed by scientific resolutions, not yet proved valid under ever more controlled conditions, it exacts a pledge for continuous experimentation, every other approach to gain understanding being but second best. While a fringe of human and social nature may always. hold out-and will, to that extent, be beyond understanding-testing will permit ever-in creasing knowledge and control. The confirming of hypotheses will mean both adding to theoretical insight and reshaping the social world. Indeed, the constructs of science will make the social world, since they alone govern and bestow status. It is true that compliance may be hard to exact, that society may not be infinitely pliable, that there are imprecise forces at work which keep men from bending. Yet it is the existence of these very forces which always poses the initial question. For unless these, too, are con trolled, every statement about the true nature of social or political things remains tentative. The task, therefore, is to reduce whatever makes management difficult, to concentrate on those slippery factors which, though still ungoverned, must be made amenable to scientific government. As one social scientist has explained,22 Having identified to our satisfaction the relevant factors in a situation, the next step [in following a scientific method] is to select those which we can effectively control. The ideal setup is one wherein we can control every factor. At the present state of the social sciences this is a mere dream. For one thing, in social science we are still lacking handles, tongs, pliers or what you will with which to grasp a situa tional factor for manipulative purposes.

Poorly equipped though it be, science must put everything of significance within its grasp. Potentially nothing can be exempt Social Science As Autonomous Activity 249 from the attempt to establish that social theories are valid, that they work, or that, in the language of Hobbes, some sovereign might convert the truth of speculation into the utility of practice. For it is felt that the knowable world contains nothing un controllable, that it is devoid of phenomena not susceptible, in principle, to scientilic for:rnulation, circuInScription, and enclo sure. Yet it should be noted that science's own framework, including the rules of procedure by which it is built up, remains free. Unlike the data it orders, it is incommensurate, introduced to rid the world of what is designated as risky, providential, or fateful. This framework is the potent variable, presumably defining states of power relations with objectivity by giving these relations symbolic or numerical attributes. These attributes, however, must in prac tice always constitute a normative standard, for departure from them will make a system's survival unlikely: departure will pro duce lawlessness and decay.

This cannot mean, certainly, that the social scientist, even when bent on the prevention of social conflict and the maintenance of public health, will go out into the world and literally make good. He may be less interested than Hobbes in having his writings fall into the hands of a sovereign. Depending on his temper, on the vitality of a residual tradition, or on prevailing social re straints-all of which are practically impressive, but theoretically irrelevant-he may be satisfied with having experienced his vision. Being patient, he may relax after having communicated it to those who might listen. But when consistently loyal to his position, he will have to fight for its incarnation, stilling whatever voices presume to resist it, aiding whatever resembles it. He must prompt men to realize their destiny, working not only as their prophet but also as their redeemer. Moreover, his labor may be supported by a belief in success for which his eighteenth-century precursors savants whose almost unified science was ignorant of the mass manipulating tools of modern technology-could not reasonably hope. Allied with the powers that be and in the name of the consummation of science, he may at last move men toward the full life, toward fulfillment in a historical millennium. 2!

250 Scientism and Values v Before outlining a few of the possible consequences of the kind of approach to the study of society which has been discussed, it should be useful to summarize three of its crucial assumptions: (1) The only significant order of social reality is the one inherently susceptible to· empirical verification, to factor analysis, and phy sicomathematical reduction; (2) the pursuit of knowledge mani fests itself in the enactment of norms which inhere in the pursuit itself; and (3) it is. the function of the scientist to master a nature including man and society-which is devoid of purposes, intel ligible and communicable by man. What are these assumptions likely to imply? If it is held that orders of reality other than those amenable to reduction to functional terms are merely subjective ones, con jectures about social institutions and policies not susceptible to empirical verification tend to be disparaged. Such speculation, considered untrustworthy, is contrasted to that whose objectivity, empirically confirmed, justifies action along lines making for the functionalization of the subject matter of social science. In this process, social science goes to work in the public arena on the basis of decisive assumptions-assumptions posited as if there were no alternatives to them-which those affected by its action do not share in formulating.

To the extent that the research is theory-oriented, all that is involved is constructing frameworks presuming to embrace vari ables of significance; to the extent that it is oriented toward the solution of practical problems, it seeks. to attain and perpetuate the final good of social harmony. Both orientations tend to co operate in integrating dysfunctional forces, in curing social and individual ills. Contribution to the body of science requires instituting that state of unity within which all particulars are truly related. This quest is not one for reflective understanding of the nature of the social world, but one for bringing history to its terminus by resolving historical conflicts in practice.

SocialScienceAs Autonomous Activity 251 While searching for the final synthesis of the manifold antago nisms man believes himself to be experiencing, the social scientist may proceed without objective limits. The limits to his action are the subjective ones of his energy, his inventiveness, his genius. Seemingly objective schemes of values which presume to re strain the attempt to control variables dissolve into the "real" forces which give rise to them. Other checks are unduly diverting, retarding the accumulation of certain knowledge and the realiza tion of ideals. Social scientists are thus" free to dominate nature with indifference to its own purposes, which are, unintelligible because science cannot establish. or validate them. They are free to press knowledge out of an environment which yields what it is forced to yield by their practical operations, by their thorough going, endless activity. "Potentially, the nature of concern to man is infinitely pliable; its components are infinitely interrelated. The only scientific challenge to any particular social arrangement must be on the ground that control is not total. Not all arrangements, of course, are equally adequate. Experiments, and the theories they sustain, may be characterized as trivial or important, de pending on the degree. to which they make control possible, to which they turn nature to man's use. Nature, it is assumed, serves its purpose by being exploited. Its purpose, as Nietzsche was the first to urge wholeheartedly, may be imputed to it by .the survival facilitating norms creatively framed by the interested scientist.

Denial of this either reflects hidden but analyzable interests or else is unhealthy and unnatural, clearly not furthering the per petuation of .life, the satisfaction of needs, or the production of comfort. When men are prepared" to act consistently on the basis of the beliefs (1) that a single approach to phenomena is socially fruitful and desirable, (2) that nothing but science itself need restrain the progressive unification of the social world, and (3) that whatever nature-including human nature ....-may be, it can potentially be made into anything else, their action is likely to have several practical effects: 1. A unification of the social sciences to carry out a concerted attack on dysfunctional forces} on social and individual disturb252 Scientism and J1alues ances. This unification requires and justifies identifying science with techniques of manipulation, letting the techniques determine the valid limits of social research, working for an integration of the outlook and resources of social scientists, and penalizing those who resist convergence.

2. A n attempt to spread information about the potency of the models of social science. Notational systems, it may be made rea sonably clear, are efficient implements for action, effective weapons for the maintenance or destruction of power, likely to become ever sharper in application. 3. A gradual enlargement of the area considered suitable for scientific operations so that ever more tracts of life may be ordered objectively. The depreciation of two major ideals would follow from this activity: (1) the ideal that agreement should be reached, however temporarily, by a process of political negotiation; (2) the ideal that conflicts should be tentatively settled by means of human-that is, value-ascribing-discourse, by dialectical social philosophy. As it becomes possible to place goals into a frame within which they may be objectively perceived, within which those value conflicts left inconclusive by parliamentary politics may be settled with finality, thanks to a neutral "administration of things," the ends of life and action are removed from the traditional process of political compromise and dialectical discussion. Such a process must appear increasingly specious, being predicated on the pos sibility of human rationality, on the conviction that language may be informative and can make genuine knowledge available. When it is held, to the contrary, that language functions merely to secure or prevent action, to maintain or destroy an equilibrium, to create or undermine consensus, parliamentarian ism can be only at mospherically useful.

The assumption that knowledge is gained only by language which has operational meaning and that all other language ration alizes th.e drive for power or serves to sublimate aggressions and extend pleasures leads not only to the devaluation of political set tlements, but also to the rejection of artists, mystics, and philos ophers as collaborators in the perennial search for final truth.

Social Science As A utonomous Activity 253 Their search, it must be held, will inevitably end in a subjective acceptance of personal feelings passed off as "truths," and no more. No doubt, such truths may still be clarified, analyzed, or causally explained. But they cannot be respected and criticized on the merits as long as all standards in reference to which criticism might be made-including, of course, standards created by social scientists,.-are themselves deemed to be subjective and conven tional. Reason, unable to decide between right and wrong conduct, to assess the various, purposes of action, to connect man with truth, can serve only to adjust him to his desires, aiding survival. Law and policy, legislation and politics, therefore, may be understood as the repercussions of' interests, not the ever-amendable result of rational discourse. To judge or construct the public order, it is necessary to understand, not the grounds offered for it, but the power alignments which brought it about, its causes rather than its merits. Its sole criterion is its effectiveness. Thus, the formula tion of policy, the drafting of constitutions, become a branch of an empirical science to which ethics is logically quite irrelevant.

And the application of this, science to solve the problems faced by society will naturally require-Lasswell, among others, has stressed this 24-"the de~emphasizing of much of the traditional baggage of metaphysics and theology." Politics. will become in creasingly objective and scientific, a calling for the expert tech nician. 4. A growing respectability of an elite of social engineers as the procedures by which free societies determine their policy goals make way for methods by which scientific truths are formulated. A comprehensive value-neutral science must divest itself, as George A. Lundberg has urged,25 of "the luxury of indignation," "personalistic and moralistic interpretations," and "deeply cher ished ideologies resembling in form if not in content their theological predecessors." It must disregard "the goals of striving" and, instead, suggest alternatives, state their implications, and develop the most efficient "method of a,chieving whatever ends men want. . .." Science is not concerned with what, at least in one sense, are ends. These society sets by any procedure it chooses.

254 Scientism and Values Science, however, cannot sanction every procedure which a society might employ: som.e of them will not aid the realization of ends. The proper procedures, the only ones which guarantee the suc cessful operation and the effective functioning of society, are those which reject the possibility that a value-impregnated expression of an individual may conceivably be true independently of his interests. In accordance with its commitment to a phenomenal reality-and its. attendant discrimination against other realms of reality-science must reduce, or repudiate as myth, the belief that ends may be ontological, that values may transcend indivi dual desires. It therefore recognizes (1) that the end for man is quite literally his end-his death, and (2) that the end for science is the assuring of survival, the maintaining of the social and individual equilibrium. Hence, the purpose of science is to keep everything endlessly moving. Its credentials are furnished by its power to make society survive; and as society is in fact kept for ever on the move-without hitches, deviations, or back talk-its credentials are authenticated.

5. A driv'e to fuss ever more intimately with the individual person so that social science may achieve its end. Having dis covered that at the core of man·is an abhorrible void, unfulfilled but crying for fulfillment, social scientists are likely to work on that state toward which man's true will aspires. Such work effects a transformation within man himself. Karl Mannheim has elabo rated on this: Functionalism made its first appearance in the field ,of the natural sciences, and could be described as the technical point of view. It has only recently been transferred t.o the social sphere .. '.. Once this technical approach was transferred' from the natural sciences to human affairs, it was bound to bring about a profound change in man himself .... The functional approach no longer regards ideas and moral standards as absolute values, but as products of the social process which can, if necessary, be changed by scientific guidance combined with political practice ....

The extension of this doctrine of technical supremacy which I have advocated in this book as one of several approaches to society is in my opinion inevitable. . . .

Social Science As A utonomous Activity 255 Progress in the technique of organization is nothing but the appli cation of technical conceptions to the forms of cooperation. A human being, regarded as part of the social machine, is to a certain extent stabilized in his reactions by training and education, and all his recently acquired activities are coordinated according to a definite principle of efficiency within an organized framework.2G In accordance with this new regard for human beings, man must be appropriately energized and directed. Being a pliable creature, he must be sufficiently softened and compressed to fit into those compartments. which might be readily supervised. Within them, he can be guided to lead a secure and satisfying life. This is best done by quieting his prejudices, straightening out his complica tions,and exposing the irrationality of his diversions. The ex peditors of history must· trim and· neutralize him, eliminating those of his motives which may set him to doing the impractical, frivolous, perilous, or unexpected. They must allow him to ex perience the positive harm of having his fling, telling his joke, or sitting the next one out. His environment must be so arranged as to make him comfortable. He must be fitted so that he will become the self-renouncing creature he· naturally is. Pains must be taken to relieve him of the agony of choice between alterna tives, relieve him of that perplexing inner conflict which jeop ardizes every civil order.

Those whose calling it is to assume total responsibility for the whole of man-the elite whose historical function it is to termi nate history-must purposefully intervene, varying one factor here, another one there, moving man by affecting his behavior, driving him by harnessing his drives, watching always whether his motions and emotions. tend more and more to conform to the plotted ideal, whether the myths calculated to galvanize him will induce him to behave as expected, to make his industry correspond to his true interest. Fortunately, it is never necessary to tamper with man's true will-only with the will's objectively pathological aberrations, with those human urgings which prompt the individual to con ceive of himself as selfishly subjective. Only the deviant, not the 256 Scientism and Values norm, need be imposed upon, and hence the elite's tax on non conformity is justified. Its claim to power is legitimate since, to the extent that it is an elite in the service of social science, it will leave normal men alone.

As Tocqueville perceived, such rational leadership is pene trating, but soothing. It is extensive, but gentle. It slowly breeds a contented mass of men-a mass untroubled by the derangements which spring from the reverberations of the playful imagination and free from that irreducible mystery of spirit upon which man, when self-deceived, bases his dignity. Above this race of men [Tocqueville concluded in his second volume on democracy in America] stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provi dent, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent, if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well con tent that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happi ness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessi ties., facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and sub divides their inheritances-what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?

VI It should be emphasized that those whose work has been here reflected on would vigorously repudiate the regime projected by Tocqueville. The grounds for this repudiation, namely, the good motives and worthy interests of social scientists, have not, of course, been the subject of this analysis, one which has been concerned instead with some of their assumptions., And these assumptions, to be fully explicit, make for a state which cannot claim to be legitimate. Although the multiplicity of existing appeals to a just Social Science As A utonomous Activity 257 order may make it appear impossible to judge any particular one as legitimate, it might, nevertheless, be suggested that these very claims imply that a normative order transcends the existing one. The denial of the reality of such transcending objectives, whether or not incorporated in a method for understanding society, cannot stand when it is tied to the belief that some specific order truly constitutes the incarnation of justice.

Although this is precisely the underlying postulate of part of the work of current social science, its authors have not simply pointed to part of reality and called it good. Yet, even when they have refused to point, the perspective embodied within their research has acted as a pointer for them. While they have not ad vocated an amoral power state, they have labored so as to produce one by systematically eliminating any rational alternative. They have effectually cancelled unrealized human ideals,--except, of course, when they have found them to be operative, to be real, to be other than ideal. Postulating a state within which all alter natives are unified, within which all ideals are one, they have made the ideal and the real synonymous. They have charged their methods to eliminate all tension between experience and aspira tion, between fact and value. Yet once they have dispelled this tension, the very notion of justice must become irrelevant. Once they have encouraged existing conditions and normative standards to blend, the very pursuit of knowledge must become an irrational endeavor. Once they have dismissed value systems providing terms by which troubled individuals might assess moving events, his torical states, and political action, man's claim to make meaningful distinctions, ascribe values, and exercise his reason must become impertinent.

That they have not been successful in their quest-and who would doubt the significance of their own contributions to a pluralistic liberal society?-is due to a lack of consistency, to a sentimentality which reflects, perhaps, either the afterglow of an older tradition or some pressing humanistic interest quietly bidding for recognition. 27 Their respect for the individual does not arise from the assumptions basic to their methods of inquiry.

258 Scientism and Values When these, rather than their generous sentiments, are followed through, there emerges a model indifferent to justice, indifferent to that indefinable human uniqueness that still makes it reason able to speak of man's moral freedom and obliges us to keep the institution of politics in good repair. NOTES 1. See Bernard Barber, Science and the Social Order (Glencoe: Free Press, 1952), p. 244. Note especially Roy R. Grinker, ed., Toward a Unified Theory of Human Behavior (New York: Basic Books, 1956); James G. Miller, "Toward a General Theory for the Behavioral Sciences," in Leonard D. White, ed., The State of the Social Sciences (Chicago: Uni versity of Chicago Press, 1956), pp. 29-65; and essays by Richard C. Snyder, Marion J. Levy, and Talcott Parsons in Roland Young, ed., Approaches to the Study of Politics (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1958). 2. "Our bias centers in the subject-predicate bifurcation of our sentence structure, a division which prevents us from formulating a proposition without a substantive either stated or implied, and which compels us to separate the substantive from the verb. . .." (Laura Thompson, "In Quest of an Heuristic Approach to the Study of Mankind," Philosophy of Science~ XIII [January, 1946], 53-66, 54.) 3. Galileo, "II Saggiatore," Opere~ 180, p. 232; quoted in R. G. Colling wood, The Idea of Nature (Oxford: Clarendon, 1945), p. 102.

4. In John Gillin, ed., For a Science of Social Man (New York: Macmillan, 1954), pp. 41-42, 44. 5. David Easton, The Political System (New York: Knopf, 1953), p. 289. 6. Theodore M. Newcomb, "Sociology and Psychology," in Gillin, ed., op. cit.~ pp. 227-256, p. 241. 7. See Hannah Arendt, "Religion and Politics," Confluence~ II (September, 1953), 105-126; Arendt also notes the blurring of distinctions resulting from the analysis of Communism as a religion. 8. For a sophisticated discussion of the procedural conventions for deter mining the correctness of a decision to accept a proposition as part of scientific knowledge, see Felix Kaufmann, Methodology of the Social Sciences (New York: Oxford University Press, 1944). 9. This definition is from the appendix of Marion J. Levy, Jr., "Some Aspects of 'Structural-Functional' Analysis and Political Science," in Young, ed., op. cit.~ pp. 52-66.

10. For an illustration, see R. K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (Glencoe: Free Press, 1949), pp. 79-80. 11. See Edwin H. Sutherland, "Social Pathology," American Journal of Sociology, L (May, 1945), 429-435, 431. 12. Harvard University Commission to Advise on the Future of Psychology Social Science As A utonomous Activity 259 at Harvard, Alan Gregg, chairman, The Place of Psychology in an Ideal University (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1947), p. 2. 13. Harold D. Lasswell, "The Policy Orientation," in Daniel Lerner and Harold D. Lasswell, eds., The Policy Sciences: Recent Developments in Science and Method (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1951), pp. 3-15, p. 3. 14. Gillin, loco cit'J p. 6. See also John Gillin, "Methods of Approach to the Study of Hunlan Behavior," in F. L. K. Hsu, ed., Aspects Of Culture and Personality (New York: Abelard-Schuman, 1954), pp. 3-18.

15. "The Forward View," in Gillin, ed., op. cit., pp. 257-276, p. 276. 16. In Louis Wirth, ed., Eleven Twenty-Six: A Decade of Social Science Research (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949), pp. 133-134. 17. Yet note the reservations about the presumption of good will as ex pressed in Arnold M. Rose, Theory and Method in the Social Sciences (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1954), pp. 184-188. 18. Harold D. Lasswell, "Current Studies of the Decision Process: Auto mation versus Creativity," Western Political Quarterly, VIII (September, 1955), 381-399, 385, 386. 19. Cf. Morris R. Cohen's conclusion that "despite some amateurish phi losophizing on the part of some physicists or biologists when they take a vacation from the field of their special competence, the fact is that natural science is never satisfied with empirical statistical correlation but ever seeks to formulate universal laws.... " ("Causation and Its Applica tion to History," Journal of the History of Ideas, III [January, 1942], 12-29, 18).

20. Christian Realism and Political Problems (New York: Scribner's, 1953), p. 83. 21. See, for example, Anatol Rapoport, Science and the Goals of Man (New York: Harper, 1950). 22. Ernest Greenwood, Experimental Sociology: A Study in Method (New York: King's Crown Press, 1945), p. 78. 23. A conclusion as extreme as this is suggested by Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952), chap. 4. Few have been as explicit on this point as Laura Thompson (loc. cit., pp. 55, 59-60). She maintains that not until social science has re-evaluated its premises in the "light of the new vision of science" and brought its "methods into line with new operational concepts, will a fundamental integration of the sciences of mankind emerge which may place in the hands of man a key to his own salvation." She concludes that, adopting the proper method, social science can help produce an ideal state by revealing what "nature-culture-personality structures" are conducive to it and by answering, anl0ng other questions, "How may those that do not fit tailor themselves or be tailored to a new and adequate design?"

24. In Lerner and Lasswell, op. cit., p. 12. 25. "The Future of the Social Sciences," Scientific Monthly, LIII (October, 1941), 346-359, 240-244. 26. Karl Mannheim, Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1951), pp. 240-244.

260 Scientism and Values 27. This may be illustrated by William Foote Whyte's Pattern for Industrial Peace (New York: Harper, 1951), an account of the relations of Inland Steel Container Company's Chicago plant with its union local of the United Steelworkers of America. Whyte says (pp. vii, 158) that the purpose of his report was "to discover general principles of human rela tions that might be applied to other cases, that might enable us to predict and control behavior." Yet, interestingly enough, his account somehow succeeds in enriching and enlarging sympathies for men as autonomous ends, suggesting tha~ Whyte was less the single-minded be haviorist than he supposes. Apparently he permitted purposes other than his professed one to select and shape his material: he notes (p. 159), for example, that he "would like people to read this book." The desire to be read, to partake in human discourse, must have called for inclusion of many a nonscientific symbol, making his work valuable and significant in a sense other than intended.