2. Objectivity and Social Science

2 Objectivity and Social Science w. T. COUCH The thesis of this paper is that the idea widely prevailing among social scientists that the social scientist knows how to proceed impartially, that he knows how to counteract or get rid of bias in his work, is an illusion. I The problem of impartiality, as everyone knows who has con cerned himself seriously with the idea, is a part of the problem of objectivity. Objectivity, it might seem, has to do with objects. But the term "object" has been applied to everything from the uni verse, and the stars and chairs and dogs and mathematics and logic that are in it, to the completely private and wholly subjective notions of individual persons. Everything that has existed, whether its existence has been private or public, has constituted an object if existence is taken as the definition of objectivity. But this defi nition is obviously unsatisfactory. It leaves no room for dis tinguishing between objectivity and subjectivity. Now, if we persist with sufficient zeal in the effort to get a satisfactory defi nition, we shall discover that we are not the first to have this interest. Plato had it. And Aristotle. And St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas and Descartes and Locke and Hume and Kant and Hegel and Kierkegaard and a host of others.

22 Objectivity and Social Science 23 The problem of objectivity is indistinguishable from the prob lem of reality. It involves such questions as: What is the universe made of? Where did this something come from? Has it always existed or was it cre.ated? What is change, does anything new come into existence with it, and how does change occur? What is permanence, and could there be any change unless. there were permanence? What are past and future, and how much do we know of what we are talking about when we talk about them? In addition to questions of being and of the sources and nature and purposes of being, objectivity involves two other classes of questions. One of these has to do with the problem of correct method in dealing with any question. This is the field of logic. The third has to do with the question how we know anything. This is the field of epistemology. We are not bringing any new knowledge into the world when we say these things. They are, or ought to be, well known, and there would be no excuse for taking time to talk about them here if all of the important assumptions of modern scholarship and science were practiced as well as preached. One of the most im portant of these assumptions is that learning is a cooperative effort, that the field in which labor is needed is so large and diverse that division and specialization are required, and that work in one field may safely be used as a foundation for work in another. It will be shown here that there is room for grave doubt about the last clause in this, assumption.

In the field of epistemology, the questions that may be asked may be regarded as comprising three classes. One has to do with extension and motion and figure and number, generally referred to as the primary qualities of objects. One has to do with color and odor and sound and taste and tactile impressions, generally referred to as the secondary qualities of objects. And one has to do with all such matters as fairness, impartiality, justice, and good ness, which are commonly referred to as values. But what value is, whether it is a quality or a relation or something else; whether it is a simple, unanalyzable, indefinable, nonnatural something; whether it is created by interest and conferred by interest on objects-all are questions of extreme controversy.

24 Scientism and Values The status of value is far less certain and far more obscure than the status of objects. The status of objects, if we accept modern science, is so uncertain and obscure as to render worse than worth less any term such as "objectivity" that depends on this status for its meaning. If knowledge of objects is knowledge only of exten sion, motion, figure and number, as was assumed when the foun dations of modern science w'ere laid; if sense impressions are all contributed by the subject; and if, as George Berkeley 1 pointed out, objects can be seen only because they are colored, it follows, if anything follows, that the status of both minds and objects in science is such as to raise the question whether rational discourse is possible. Berkeley failed to take into account the consideration that if objects existed only in minds, as he held, one could close and open his eyes without having any effect whatever on the visi bility of objects. And if there is any such process as proof that involves the world-as distinguished from proof that has to do only with words that have no necessary connection with the world -then the fact that when one closes one's eyes objects disappear is proof that objects exist outside of human minds.

It would be fatuous to assume that because Berkeley did not take these considerations into account, he was unaware of them. His attention was focused on the more important consideration that modern science was undermining the foundations of rational discourse. His object was to keep modern science and at the same time restore the foundations. Berkeley insisted on the one implication, assuming the validity of the work of Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, and Newton, that was necessary to save man from a situation in which it 'Y0uld ap pear to be warranted to say that something both is and is not at the same time and in the same way, and that two persons may see something truly and yet see it as something totally different. Berk eley's insistence that modern science necessarily implies a mind that contains everything, that maintains everything in existence, that sees everything truly as it is, is, among other things, a way of insisting that rationality is available for the government of the universe and that the effort of man to understand and participate Objectivity and Social Science 25 in this rationality and govern himself by it is not utterly hopeless.

Berkeley held, as everyone has had to hold who has proceeded rationally, that man cannot create rationality out of nothing. If it is to be available to him at all, it must be made available to him by some power not his, own. It is impossible to accept modern science and at the same time save objectivity in any sense that distinguishes it from subjectivity unless Berkeley's implication is accepted. Modern science, all of us know or ought to know, has not accepted Berkeley's implication. It has swallowed camels in the way of implications and, with the exception of a very few thinkers like Alfred North Whitehead, has refused to have anything to do with this gnat. Whitehead saw clearly that Berkeley's implication was necessary to save rationality as well as objectivity, and, being devoted to both, he did not hesitate to accept it. But on this point Whitehead is not generally accepted. Modern science, as a conse quence, remains in the bog of subjectivity into which Copernicus and Galileo and Descartes led it. Modern phenomenology has not solved this problem. If the bias which pervades modern science is to be eliminated, it is necessary to hold that "what H ume gave to Kant as a problem Kant handed back unchanged as, the solu tion." 2 The followers of Kant-and not to follow Kant is to be in a negligible minority-have either buried the problem or evaded it. In this situation, the use of the term "objectivity" or equivalent language is indulgence in a practice for which primi tive people who have no chance to know better could he excused, but for which the modern social scientist has no excuse. Dorothy Emmett, in her Nature of Metaphysical Thinking~3 correctly char acterizes this practice: "If we confine ourselves to a purely phe nomenalist account of perception, any assumption concerning an external world would be an animistic projection, since on this view sense data are subjective states."

Now, hopelessly confused as is the problem of objectivity in the sense of the real existence of the external world, the problem of value is incomparably more confused. No one doubts that objects, whatever their status in existence, 26 Scientism and Values have primary qualities. No one doubts that there are correlates of such linguistic expressions as "chair," "table," "this person," etc., even though the questions how the correlates exist and how it is that this existence is public and there can be communication about it are in a state of extreme confusion. No one doubts that there are correlates of such linguistic expressions as "yellow," "stench," "buzzing," "s.weet," "soft." Despite all confusion, it is possible to point, or seem to point, to objects that exemplify, or seem to exemplify, primary and secondary qualities, and scientific means and standards are available for determining the relations of these qualities to objects, whether the objects are in minds, or in the external world or in both or are distributed among and between the two or have some other unknown and perhaps un thinkable status.

The situation is entirely different in regard to the question of value. Here there is doubt about the existence of correlates. It is possible, as we have seen, to verify statements about objects such as chairs and tables in so far as these statements involve primary and secondary qualities. But what of such statements as "This is good" or "This is bad"? "The question really at issue," wrote G. E. Moore more than a quarter century ago in his essay on the "Na ture of Moral Philosophy," is the question whether when we judge (whether truly or falsely) that an action is a duty or a state of things good, all that we are thinking about the action or the state of things in question is simply and solely that we ourselves or others have or tend to have a certain feeling towards it when we contemplate or think of it.... If this view be true .... when I say "That was wrong" I am merely saying, "That sort of action excites indignation in me, when I see it"-and when you say "No; it was not wrong," you are merely saying, "It does not excite indignation in me) when I see it." ...

"If this view be true," concludes Moore, "then there is absolutely no such thing as a difference in opinion on moral questions." 4 David Hume stated the same problem when he wrote in his Treatise on Human Nature: Objectivity and Social Science 27 Take any action allowed to be vicious: wilful murder, for instance. Examine it in all lights and see if you can find that matter of fact, or real existence, which you call vice. In whichever way you take it, you find only certain passions, motives, volitions and thoughts. There is no other matter of fact in the case. The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider the object. You never can find it, till you turn your reflexion into your own breast, and find a sentiment of disap probation, which arises in you, towards this action. Here is a matter of fact; but 'tis the object of feeling, not of reason. It lies in yourself, not in the object. So that when you pronounce any action or character to be vicious, you mean nothing, but that from the constitution of your nature you have a feeling or sentiment of blame from the con templation of it. Vice and virtue, therefore, may be compar'd to sounds, colours, heat and cold, which, according to modern philoso phy, are not qualities in objects, but perceptions in the mind. 5 In another passage H ume makes it clear that according to this same modern philosophy, vice and virtue cannot consist in rela tions any more than they can in qualities of objects. But if they do not consist in either qualities or relations, the question arises whether they exist at all. The thing that John Donne saw when over three hundred years. ago he looked at the direction modern science was taking and wrote: 'Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone All just supply and all relation ....

Sight is the noblest sense of anyone, Yet sight hath only colour to feed on, And colour is decaid; summer's robe growes Duskie, and like an oft dyed garment showes. Our blushing red, which used in cheeks·to spred Is inward sunk, and only our soules, are red 6 the modern social scientist has not yet seen in spite of his concern with physical science as a model of what all science should be. The view that color and odor and sound and taste and tactile qualities are all in the subject, none in the object, if any, that somehow gives rise to them, is ancient. Montaigne summarizes this view in a classic statement at the end of his famous "Apology for 28 Scientism and Values Raimond Sebond." But this view was only beginning to have scien tific significance in Montaigne's time. The only important oppos ing view, that of Aristotle, was still dominant when Montaigne was writing. The Aristotelian view is the only systematically ob jective one that the world has had. The basis for displacing it with the subjective view of modern science was being laid during the hundred years before and after Montaigne wrote his, essays.

The position of physical science in the twentieth century is completely in line with the trend started by Copernicus and Des cartes, Galileo and Newton. Alfred North Whitehead summarizes this position: . . . the mind in apprehending also experiences sensations which, properly speaking, are qualities of the mind alone. These sensations are projected by the mind so as to clothe appropriate bodies in exter .. nal nature. Thus the bodies are perceived as with qualities which in reality do not belong to them, qualities which in fact are purely the offspring of the mind. Thus nature gets credit which in truth should be reserved for ourselves; the rose for its scent: the nightingale for his song: and the sun for his radiance. The poets are entirely mis.. taken. They should address their lyrics to thems.elves, and should turn them into odes of self-congratulation on the excellency of the human mind. Nature is a dull affair, soundless, scentless, colorless; merely the hurrying of material, endlessly, meaninglessly.?

"However you disguise it," says Whitehead, "this is the practi cal outcome of the characteristic scientific philosophy which closed the seventeenth century." And, he says, It is still reigning. Every university in the world organizes itself in accordance with it. No alternative system of organizing the pursuit of truth has been suggested. It is not only reigning, but it is without rival. "And yet," adds Whitehead, "it is quite unbelievable." 8 Whether it is believable or not, one thing is certain. This state ment of Whitehead's shows what an animistic hash the objectivity is that the social sciences get from the physical sciences. It shows Objectivity and Social Science 29 the physical world with nothing whatever in it that could even remotely be imagined as a correlate for fairness and impartiality, justice or injustice, good or evil, nothing that even suggests value. The point here for our purposes is that if all moral questions are illusory, if the feelings that people have about such matters as justice and good and evil and right and wrong have no correlates, if the nature of things is such that there cannot be any moral cor relates either in states of affairs or states of mind, it is obvious that the pretension of the social scientist to objectivity as fairness or impartiality or justice is merely testimony concerning the state of his feelings, and, so far as the states beyond his feelings are concerned, his claim is wholly illusory. The social scientist lives in a world in which conflicts of world-wide proportions are occur ring over what people imagine to be justice. He has made impor tant contributions to the idea that these conflicts are really about justice. But when he is asked what this justice is, he is unable to say anything that is distinguishable from the appeal of the dema gogue to the mob. And this is not all.

One of the chief accomplishments of the social scientist during the last century or so has been to help undermine the notion that ideas of good and evil, better and worse are more than mere va grant feelings. The charge that the social scientist wants to have a piece of moral objectivity, and that he has been preaching that there is no moral objectivity to have a piece of and that there cannot be any, is serious, and I now turn to evidence bearing on this charge. II The discussion that follows will seem to the reader petty un less he remembers that we are concerned here with problems of more than ordinary importance and that one of the first questions we have to ask of a piece of writing that is presented to the world as a contribution to knowledge is: Does the author know what he is talking about? Has he succeeded in understanding what he says? Has he solved the problem of reasoning, of communicating with himself?

30 Scientism and Values Ruth Benedict's Patterns of Culture 8 has been one of the most popular books to come from the field of the social sciences during the last quarter century. In addition to being extremely popular, as evidenced by more than a dozen printings in cheap editions, each of which could hardly have been less than 100,000 copies it has received the accolade from leading social scientists. We take it as an example because of its distinction in these respects. On page 2 of Patterns of Culture} Miss Benedict says, "No man ever looks at the world with pristine eyes." Now, "no man," is a great many people; in fact, it is everybody; and "ever" is a long time. In the sentence which follows Miss Benedict makes a typical statement of the principle of social causation, the principle that says that we are what we are because of the society into which we are born. Miss Benedict does not take into account the fact that if social scientists succeed in getting outside of social causation, this fact has to be explained; and, if they do not, her book is merely an example of the fact that some societies produce people who, as a consequence of social causation and for no other reason, busy themselves with the "study" of other societies, and otherwise these studies are meaningless. It could be a matter of some sig nificance to know that some people in some societies do get out side of social causation and, as a consequence, may be able to see the world and man as they really are. If this happens, to know how it happens could be a step to som~ real knowledge in social SCIence.

Miss Benedict tells the reader on page 1 that "To the anthro pologist, our customs and those of aNew Guinea tribe are two possible schemes for dealing with a common problem. . . ." It is hardly possible for us to doubt this, and we wonder why Miss Benedict says it. At first it appears she is telling us we have no real reasons for thinking one way of doing things is any better than another. It does not take us long to see that she does not know what she is saying when she says this. For it can hardly be open to dispute that on a rational basis it makes all the difference between science and not science how things are done. If this were not the case, there would be no reason for having anthropologists, much less for taking them seriously. All of us know better than Objectivity and Social Science 31 to be taken in by the argument that one way of doing carpentering or plumbing or electrical work is just as good as another. The support that we give to schools and colleges, to the cultivation of knowledge and skill in all fields, stands as testimony to our belief that there are better and worse ways. of doing things.

Why does Miss Benedict feel it necessary to write as if she equates primitive ways with civilized ways? Does she really intend to maintain this equation? If she does, it is impossible to under stand her repeated arguments for a "rational social order" based on what she calls a "realistic social faith." Why, if Miss Benedict really believes that the "patterns of life which mankind has created for itself" are "equally valid" and should all be tolerated, as she says at the end of her book, does she speak on page 4 of her first chapter of "battles we may fairly count as won"? The truth is, and Miss Benedict makes this as clear as it is possible to make anything, she is writing to help destroy what she regards as preju dice in the United States and to establish what she regards as a "rational social order." Now when Miss Benedict does this, she is simply doing what all the rest of us d~, trying to maintain what we think is the best way of doing things. But whatever Miss Bene dict's purpose, we cannot accept her view that no people in the world have developed better ways of doing things and at the same time accept the view that some people have developed better ways.

Now, if we cannot agree on the principle used in our last sen tence, if we do not understand it and are not able or willing to use it on our own arguments .as well as on Miss Benedict's, in our opinion we are incapable of understanding anything and will re main incapable until we have mastered it. Until this principle is understood, it is a waste of time and worse to discuss anthropology or anything else but this principle. Immediately after telling the reader that "To the anthropolo gist, our customs and those of aNew Guinea tribe are two pos sible social schemes for dealing with a common problem," Miss Benedict goes on, "and in so far as he remains an anthropologist he is bound to avoid any weighting of one in favour of the other." This is the principle of objectivity in method. Does Miss Benedict know what she is saying when she says this? "The study of cus32 Scientism and Values tom," Miss Benedict tells us on page 3, "can be profitable only after certain preliminary propositions have been accepted, and some of these propositions have been violently opposed. In the first place any scientific study requires that there be no preferential weighting of one or another of the items it selects for its consid eration." This is the same principle of objectivity again. It is re peated at least a half dozen times in the first chapter, and, in our opinion, it deserves emphasis; but again, we have to ask, does Miss Benedict know what she is saying when she says this? Does she really mean that the anthropologist ought always to proceed in such a manner that he cannot see and condemn the evils in soci eties such as Hitler's National Socialism or Stalin's or Khrushchev's Communism? Does· she really mean to advocate no "preferential weighting" against such things in societies as concentration camps?

If she does, then so far as we are concerned, she is using some thing labelled anthropology to cultivate something worse than barbarism. If she does not mean this, how do we explain what she says, and the fact that she says it over and over? It happens that we are convinced that objectivity as fairness and impartiality is essential to the proper development of social sci ence, but we doubt whether our words, or the word "objectivity," or such sentences as those that Miss Benedict utters in its place, have any magical powers. Resolutions and ritual observances in volving the repetition of formulas that are not clearly understood seem highly inappropriate to the sciences. But perhaps we are wrong and Miss Benedict does somewhere elaborate on the mean ing of this principle to which she appeals, or perhaps some other social scientist has done so; but we have searched and we have not found any anywhere. We have found plenty of statements such as those Miss Benedict utters, and all of them are virtual equivalents of the definition given in Fairchild's Dictionary of Sociology that objectivity 'is "The ability to detach oneself from situations in which one is personally involved, and to view the facts on the basis of evidence and reason rather than prejudice and emotion, without bias or preconception, in their true setting."

It is evident, if we examine this definition, that objectivity con tains some problems. One of these is the meanings of words in the Objectivity and SocialScience 33 definition such as "fact," and "reason," and "prejudice," and "bias," and "emotion," and "preconception." Shall we rely on our untested conceptions of the me.anings of these terms-a practice that has been condemned in scientific procedure for hundreds of years-or shall we try to find and use scientific meanings? Take, for instance, the terlTIS llprejud~ce" and "bias." If we as sume that it is possible to be unprejudiced and unbiased, we still have some problems. We still have to demonstrate that this state of mind is not equivalent to that which Kant 10 called "indifferent ism-the mother in all sciences of chaos and night." We have to show that it is possible for some people to get outside of social causation, and this has not been shown. We have to deal with such arguments as that of Ralph Barton Perry that It is characteristic of living mind to be for some things and against others. This polarity is not reducible to that between "yes" and "no"

in the logical or purely cognitive sense, because one can say "yes" with reluctance or be glad to say "no." To be "for" or "against" is to view with favor or disfavor; it is a bias of the subject toward or away from. II Perry does not say it is characteristic of some living minds to be objective, or to be able to achieve objectivity, and of other living minds to be for some things and against others. He says simply that "it is characteristic of living mind to be for some things and against others." If this is true, and if its application is universal, and it contains no modifier saying that it isn't, bias is not only universal, but there is no way of getting rid of it. In this case, objectivity as absence of bias is a m,eaningless concept. And if we are allowed the assumption that social scientists are people, this applies to them as well as to others. Finally, we need to know what happens to a feeling when we detach it from ourselves for the purpose of examining it. If moral feelings have no existence except in human breasts, as in H ume' s argument and as in modern science, it is obvious the logical posi tivists are right and we are talking about nothing when we talk about detached moral feelings.

34 Scientism and Values III Let us resume our examination of Miss Benedict as scientist. On page 9 Miss Benedict tells the reader that "A. very little ac quaintance with other conventions, and a knowledge of how vari ous these may be, would do much to promote a rational social order." Notice how in this statement on page 9 "a very little ac quaintance" is all that is necessary to take care of the argument for social causation introduced on page 2 with the statem.ent that "no man ever looks at the world with pristine eyes." However, let this pass, and let us say immediately that we too are interested in the idea of a "rational social order," but by this time we are begin ning to wonder whether we are supposed to accept these words as words of magic and to assume that if we repeat them often enough they will bring us what we want. The effort to discover what a "rational social order" would be did not start with modern social science. It is, in our view, any thing but evidence of rationality in social science that it should be necessary to elaborate on this question. Miss Benedict could have learned from many easily available sources that the question of a rational social order is ancient. Let us take one of the many possible early sources, the play A ntigone by Sophocles, and show how it poses the problem that Miss Benedict seems to think is solved by three words. Here is an abbreviated outline of the play: Antigone's brothers, Eteocles and Polyneices, have killed each other in a battle before the gates of Thebes. Polyneices had in vaded his homeland with an armed force. Creon, after the death of Eteocles and Polyneices, was next in succession to the kingship and his first action as king was to issue a proclamation: Eteocles, who died as a man should die, fighting for his country, is to be buried with full military honors, with all the ceremony that is usual when the greatest heroes die; but his brother Polyneices, who broke his exile to come back with fire and sword against his native city and the shrines of his fathers' gods, whose one idea was to spill the blood of his blood and sell his own people into slavery-PolyObjectivity and Social Science 35 neices, I say, is to have no burial: no man is to touch him or say the least prayer for him; he shall lie on the plain, unburied; and the birds and the scavenging dogs can do with him whatever they like.I2 Creon is moved by feeling in conjunction with and guided by a notion of law. Antigone is moved by the same. The difference between Creon and Antigone that is relevant for our discussion is in their notions of law. Creon as king in his proclamation makes law. He does not make explicit something already in custom and habit or the nature of things. He does not discover. He invents, creates. Antigone says Creon's proclamation "was not God's proc lamation. That final justice that rules the world below makes, no such laws." Antigone takes the position that the higher law says, regardless of what Polyneices has done, he should be given decent burial. Antigone is asserting what the evidence in the play says Sophocles regarded as the objectivity of justice. Creon is denying the objectivity and asserting the subjectivity of justice. Now the important point for our discussion is that it is impossible to make sense and hold both positions at the same time. Miss Benedict holds both positions. There are no grounds, she tells us, for hold ing that the ways of one society are better than those of another.

At the same time she says there are grounds for holding that the ways of one society are better than those of another. And what are these grounds? Miss Benedict's notions of a rational social order. Which, unless she shows that they are objective, may be merely Miss Benedict's notions. She gives no evidence whatever that she recognizes that there is a problem here. One more example from the first few pages of the first chapter of Patterns of Culture~ On page 1, Miss Benedict tells, the reader that "custom has not commonly been regarded as a thing of any great moment." Since Miss Benedict's work is presented to the public as that of a scientist, and since scientists are supposed to pay scrupulous attention to facts, it is necessary to say that this statement of Miss Benedict's is not true. She leaves out a large body of important facts. Only one sample of many that are pos sible will be given here.

One of the most important collections of the various customs 36 Scientism and Values of different peoples was made over two thousands years ago by HerodotuS', the first historian whose works the modern world has inherited. Now it happens, as everyone interested in custom ought to know, that Herodotus not only gave the world an extensive account of the customs of different peoples of his time and pre ceding times, but he also told a story about burial customs that has long been famous, has been told and retold many times, and illustrates the great problem of custom as well as any story that could be told. The story is worth repeating here. Darius, after he had got the kingdom of Persia, so Herodotus 13 tells us, called into his presence certain Greeks who were at hand, and asked "What he should pay them to eat the bodies of their fathers when they died?" To which they answered that there was no sum that would tempt them to do such a thing. He then sent for certain Indians, of the race called Callatians, men who eat their fathers, and asked them, while the Greeks stood by, and knew by the help of an interpreter all that was said-"What he should give them to burn the bodies of their fathers at their decease?" The Indians exclaimed aloud, and bade him forbear such language.

It is not recorded either by Herodotus or anyone else that as a consequence of this experiment by Darius any progress was made to-w'ard the establishment of a rational social order. It would be possible, however, to interpret the work of Miss Benedict and many of her colleagues in the social sciences as illustrating the great principle discovered by Herodotus in his study of custom: "I have no doubt whatever," says Herodotus, that Cambyses was completely out of his mind; it is the only possible explanation of his assault upon, and mockery of, everything which ancient law and custom have made sacred in Egypt. If anyone, no matter who, were given the opportunity of choosing from amongst all the nations the set of beliefs which he thought best, he would inevit ably, after careful consideration of their relative merits, choose that of his own country. Everyone without exception believes in his own native customs, and that being so, it is unlikely that anyone but a Objectivity and Social Science 37 madman would mock at such things. There is abundant evidence that this is the universal feeling about the ancient customs of one's country. 14 It is necessary only to make a few substitutions such as that of "science" for "nation" or "country" to see how closely this state ment made more than two thousand years ago fits the modern case. Most of us today worship science. There has never been a time when so many people-communists and anticommunists, national socialists and antinational socialists-were joined in one worship and so convinced that the thing they worship is the thing that will bring everybody the good things of life and therefore ought to be worshipped.

Herodotus, it is clear, would have understood how it is that the problem of Antigone and Creon, which we have outlined above, is a perennial problem and how this problem arises out of the nature of society and the effort to create a rational social order, with or without the aid of social science. Now we cannot say that for a person to communicate with him self or othe'rs he must have complete understanding of a subject, for it is possible that every subject in the world is connected with every other, and complete understanding or objectivity in this case would call for knowing the whole truth about the world and everything in it. But we can say and we can know as certainly as we can know anything that we can't say something in one sentence and deny it in another and make sense. If what we have said is true, Miss Benedict does not make sense of a rational kind. The kind of sense that she makes is of the irrational propagandistic kind, a kind bound to lead away from rather than toward the rational social order which Miss Benedict professes to want and that all of us ought to want and work for.

IV We do not have the space here to report and discuss in any detail the allegations of social scientists concerning methods of eliminating or counteracting bias in their work. The dodges are 38 Scientism and Values numerous; but the most frequent procedure is either to use the term "objectivity" or equivalents to invoke the thing that is wanted. The assertion is never made in so many words that the social scientist can call spirits from the vasty deep who will see to it that his procedure is fair and impartial, but the pretension is there nevertheless; and no one asks seriously, will they come merely because they are called? The best discussion of the problem that is available is probably Max Weber's, but it seems not to have occurred to Weber or any of his followers that social science is no better equipped to take value into account than it is to drop it out, that it is necessary to know what value is before you can do either, that the great achievement of economic theory lies pre cisely in its leaving the question of value to wholly subjective proc esses. Weber says that "all evaluative ideas are subjective." 15 "It is simply naive to believe," he says, "although there are many special ists who even now do, that it is possible to establish and demon strate as scientifically valid 'a principle' for practical social science from which the norms for the solution of practical problems can be unambiguously derived." 16 That Weber went far toward rec ognizing the difficulty of the problem is clear. "The possible," he said, "is often reached only by striving to attain the impossible that lies beyond it." 17 He was obviously searching for a combina tion of empiricism and theory, and we 'cannot escape the convic tion that he was right in doing so. "The earliest intentionally rational therapy," he said, involved the almost complete rejection of the cure of empirical symp toms by empirically tested herbs and potions in favor of the exorcism of (what was thought to be) the "real" (magical, daemonic) cause of the ailment. Formally, it had exactly the same higWy rational structure as many of the most important developments in modern theory. But we do not look on these priestly magical therapies as progress . . .18 And so Weber advises the social scientist to recognize that in dealing with social problems he cannot escape the problem of value, that he cannot know what he is doing unless he recognizes Objectivity and SocialScience 39 values and deliberately and openly gives them place in theoretical systems or ideal .types which he can then use somewhat as the physical scientist uses his mathematical formulas. But just how the social scientist can take into account something that he is unable to show in existence, Weber does not say. Yet what he does say, and he says it clearly (if in accepting implications we d<;> not strain at gnats while we swallow camels), is. that the social scientist has no basis for his science but beliefs; and Weber's theory thus. has the highly significant consequence of making social science a function of belief.

It is not possible in a necessarily brief discussion to dispose of all the puerile arguments on the subject of objectivity as fairness and impartiality, but we ought not to overlook the prescription, so blandly and so often given, that all we have to do is guide our selves by the relevant facts and logically sound inferences, from facts. If this were as easy to do as it is to say, Miss Benedict would not have made the elem.entary logical blunders that we have shown she did make in her Patterns of Culture) and if it were easy to recognize these hIunders social science would long ago have become a more rational discipline. The failures of social science are human failures. Let us now consider whether our understand ing of what a fact is, is any better than our understanding of the first principle in logic. v It would be possible to interpret the case of Antigone as that of an overwrought young woman whose "higher law" was a mere projection of her fantasy and who, because she lacked the advice of the modern psychoanalyst or psychiatrist, did not know any better than to risk her life in an unne<::essaryconflict with author ity over a meaningless burial custom. iPolyneices was dead. What difference did it make what was done with his body? In a rational social order, presumably, no one would be so foolish as to risk his life to support one method of disposing of a dead body rather than another. Antigone and Creon made the mistake of not being born in a rational social order. In such an order facts of this 40 Scientism and. Values nature would be looked on indifferently. But there are some facts that if allowed to exist might threaten the existence of a rational social order. Could a rational social order exist if no one was will ing to risk his life to keep such facts from coming into existence?

It is necessary in any reasonable examination of the problem of objectivity to consider the possibility that both Antigone and Creon were trying to discover the m.eanings of the facts that they had before them and struggling to do what they felt necessary to establish and maintain a rational social order. But, it might be said, this is an ancient example and we have not faced in it the question of the, meaning of fact. We have to face this problem, so let us take a few samples of what has been said in the last fifty years or so on the question what facts are. We shall start with William James. James does not give us a definition, but he speaks of facts as hard, stubborn, irreducible. "The tough minded," he says, are the men whose Alpha and Omega are facts. Behind the bare phenomenal facts ... there is nothing. When a rationalist insists that behind the facts there is the ground of facts, the possibility of facts, the tougher empiricists accuse him of taking the mere name and nature of a fact and clapping it behind the fact as duplicate entity to make it possible ... 19 If we examine this statement seriously, we see that James re fuses to try to account for facts before their appearance and after their appearance. James was doing essentially the same thing that men do now when they repeat the proposition of Descartes,20 "I think; therefore, I am," without considering that this formula, when used as an article of faith today, cries for expansion into the question: There was a time when I did not think; therefore if I believe what I am told about myself and the world, I was not.

Now, I think; therefore, I am. I am approaching a state when again, if I believe what I am told, I shall not think; therefore I shall not be. But this is something coming from nothing and going into nothing. This is a miracle. And I am told not to believe in miracles. Is there anything that I can believe that makes sense?

Objectivity and Social Science 41 James saw his world as consisting of facts that, so far as his explanations were concerned, appeared out of nothing and dis appeared into nothing. At the time that James was writing, F. H. Bradley was also writ ing about facts from a totally different point of view. Bradley said, "'By fact I mean either an event, or else what is directly experi enced. Any aspect of direct experience, or again of an event, can itself be loosely styled a fact or event, so far as you consider it a qualifying adjective of one ... " 21 "And," goes on Bradley, this fact or event "must happen in a soul; for where else could it exist?" 22 Bradley does exactly what James objects to. He claps the fact into a soul to give the fact, as the condition of its appearance, a place to exist before and after it is seen as a fact. According to Alfred North·Whitehead, fact depends on point of view.

Galileo said that the earth moves and that the sun is fixed; the In quisition said that the earth is fixed and the sun moves; and N ew tonian astronomers, adopting an absolute theory of space, said that both the sun and earth move. But now we say that anyone of these statements is equally true, provided that you have fixed your sense of "rest" and "motion" in the way required by the statement adopted. At the date of Galileo's controversy with the Inquisition, Galileo's way of stating the facts was, beyond question, the fruitful procedure for scientific research. But in itself it was not more true than the formulation of the Inquisition .... Yet this question of the motions of the earth and the sun expresses a real fact in the universe; and all sides had got hold of important truths concerning it.23 And so it is in modern science: precisely the same fact is a fact or is not a fact, depending on where you stand, and there is no ground that can be taken and on which what is fact for one is fact for all. There is no truth; only truths.

Let us now jump to definitions of recent years. "What, then, are facts?" ask Cohen and Nage1.24 "Are they, as is sometimes as serted, hypotheses for which evidence is considerable?" And they say, "Whether a proposition shall be called a fact or a hypothesis depends on the state of our evidence." It also depends, they might 42 Scientism and Values have added, on the state of opinion on inductive proof. If the present opinion that all the evidence has to be in continues, on this basis we shall not know what a fact is until Gabriel blows his trumpet. Cohen and Nagel, let us remind ourselves, are writing about logic and scientific method. Their definition is, the one most popular today in scientific circles. It is substantially the same as that of the logical positivists. Theirs. is that "all propositions which have factual content are empirical hypotheses. . . ." 25 Another popular definition is that "a fact is an empirically verifiable state ment about phenomena in terms of a conceptual scheme." 26 This may be criticized on the grounds that time does not stop and keep phenomena lying around conveniently for statements about them to be verified. The phenomenon, like murder, is something that happens, and once it has happened it is part of the past and you can't bring the murdered person back to life and have the mur derer do the job all over again in order to verify statements that may have been made about the first occurrence. As a final sample we shall mention those schools of thought to which facts are con figurations of particles, or of energized particles, or of particles of energy, and to which scientific knowledge is mathematical equa tions correlating such configurations.

It occurs to us at this point, and the thought will not be re pressed, that the problem of objectivity now calls for the question: Do any of these particles of energy have wings, and are some of the wings white and others black? And then the thought comes, are wings really necessary? And how many of these particles of energy can dance on the point of a needle? Now, in all seriousness, it is not necessary to reject this last explanation of fact in the name of sanity. Plato was very close to it, whether we follow Jowett in the view that Plato said, "The definition of being is simply power," or Cornford, who translates (Sophist 247E): "I am proposing as a mark to distinguish real· things that they are nothing but power." The difference between Plato and the modern social scientist is that Plato's theory of facts was systematic, relatively complete, and remarkably consistent. The same is true of Aristotle. The best we can get from the social scientist today is such exhortations as to distinguish between what Objectivity and SocialScience 43 is and what ought to be and to keep the two separate and distinct, and then, after his exhortations, h.e gives evidence that he does not know what he is talking about.

The position of the social scientist who talks about objectivity and facts today is indistinguishable from that of the hunter who is telling his friends of his adventures. 27 One of the most exciting, he says, is the occasion when he was completely surrounded by wild animals. "How did you escape?" his friends ask. "I didn't," he replies. "They ate me up." And he continues talking and his friends continue listening without showing any interest whatever in the question how someone who has been eaten up can continue talking. VI We have now shown what we' started out to show, namely, that the assertion of the social scientist that he knows how to pro~ ceed impartially, that he knows the meaning of objectivity as fair ness and is able to apply this meaning in his work, is an illusion. It remains only to suggest that the effects of this illusion are as destructive in society as the action of a man who has lost his mind and believes that he can walk out of an airplane that is in flight and step safely on solid earth.

So far as this writer has been able to discover, very few social scientists are aware that there is a problem of objectivity, that this problem poses a test of r.ationality in its most crucial form, and that this problem has not been solved by modern science and phi losophy because of a deep and ineradicable bias in both against the one implication that is necessary to save rationality as well as objectivity. It is not possible here to explore further the charge that rationality has been lost along with objectivity. We shall take space only to mention areas of tremendous importance in which modern social science, instead of proceeding rationany and help ing to create the order and the understanding and the acceptance of order that are possible and most desirable in the interests of the general welfare, has given tremendous impetus to proceeding irra tionally and to the consequent increase of all the impulses and 44 Scientism and Values conditions in society that are opposed to the general welfare. It should not be necessary to say here that the pretension of social science to stand for and to cultivate the general welfare is not a self-vindicating one. It is held here that the power of the social scientist in modern society is even greater than that of the physical scientist. The power of the social scientist is the decisive power.

He, more than anyone else, created the state of mind in the United States that led the people of this country to accept a policy that, during the second of this century's world wars, turned a large part of the world over to communism and resulted in the situation under which, after the war, free society had to retreat or face a third world war. He, more than anyone else, created the state of mind that prior to and during the Second World War denied the possibility of any choices. in the world other than those between fascism and communism. He was completely unaware that his talk about justice was empty and illusory and that in engaging in such talk he was stirring up and adding to the destructive conflicts. that he said he wanted to allay. We shall now call on two distinguished social scientists to illus trate this problem. Robert M. MacIver illustrates it with crystal clarity in his Web of Government as well as in other writings. We shall refer here to only two passages of many that need examina tion. First, let us document the statement made above concerning the attitude of the social scientist toward communism during World War II: "... the successors of the Versailles states.men,"

writes MacIver, "dream vain comfortable policies of appeasement, wishfully thinking that the growing fury can be diverted from themselves toward Soviet Russia, the portentous. revolutionary state they stupidly imagine to be the real menace." 28 This attitude ,vas general among social scientists during World War II. A few, like Joseph Schumpeter, saw the truth in spite of the blinkers that modern science had put on them; but what they saw has never been passed on effectively to the general public, so deep is the prejudice that has been built up against the truth in this matter. It might be argued in extenuation for MacIver and the majority of his colleagues that the leaders of the country in all walks of life, and not merely the social scientists, held this attitude. But it has Objectivity and SocialScience 45 to be said that if the social scientist does not know better in regard to questions that involve his science, as this question does, then his science is a snare and a delusion.

Secondly, we shall docum,ent the statement that the social scien tist in talking about justice not only does not know what he is talking about, but is stirring up and adding to destuctive conflict. "Every society," says, Maclver,28 "is held together by a myth sys tem, a complex of dominating thought-forms that determines and sustains all its activities. All social relations, the very texture of human society, are myth-born and myth-sustained .... When we speak here of myth," he says, we imply nothing concerning the grounds of belief, so far as belief claims to interpret reality. We use the word in an entirely neutral sense. Whether its content be revelation or superstition, insight or prejudice, is not here in question. We need a term that abjures all reference to tru th or falsi ty. It follows that every society to preserve itself has to preserve its myth. MacIver eliminates the only possibility of mediation be tween myths when he says that in using the term "myth" he "ab jures all reference to truth or falsity." Under these conditions, the role of the social scientist is necessarily limited to that of support ing and strengthening the myth of the society to which he belongs.

The fact that MacIver devotes much of his writing to searching for a basis for mediation between the myths of different societies does not alter the fact that he himself specifies conditions that eliminate the only possible basis for such mediation. MacIver's case is particularly instructive because his work is far superior to most work in the social sciences. If he makes his own way to the bog of subjectivity and falls in and stays in and does not know where he is, it cannot reasonably be expected that other and lesser minds can do better. We now come to the second of our social scientists that we have picked for illustrative purposes. We shall now take a brief look at Gunnar Myrdal and his American Dilemma. First, let us ob serve that this work would not have been written without the 46 Scientism and Values support of the Carnegie Corporation, one of the country's wealthi est foundations. The Carnegie Corporation gave Myrdal a com mission to produce a "wholly objective and dispassionate" 30 study.

Myrdal accepted the Carnegie Corporation's commission, but pro duced a work in which he says correctly that objectivity achieved in the conventional ways, that is by rituals involving assertions and resolutions, is not trustworthy.31 Myrdal, flouting his commission -which certainly deserved to be flouted-argues. that it is the duty of the social scientist to serve the ends chosen by the society of which he is a member; he assumes that the United States is one society; and he argues that the United States has chosen equality as one of its ends. The difficulty with Myrdal's argument is that in the context of modern science, a context which Myrdal accepts, an appeal for equality is an appeal to power. Most of us want equality, and the meaning that we give to equality is, all the power that we have the power to get. We work for or against equality as we think it works for or against getting power for us. Modern sci ence has made power and only power the supreme and the only reality. All else is illusion. Freedom, equality, justice are in its scheme only means of deception, and necessarily so. It would be necessary to change the foundations of modern science in order to have any other possibility. The social scientist in this view does not necessarily engage in deception by intention. His use of de ception may be a consequence of his ignorance, or it may be a consequence of his willingness to playa Machiavellian part.

It should not be surprising, when we have some understanding of this problem, that in the two most destructive periods. in the history of mankind, the periods of the two world wars of the twen tieth century, modern social scientists generally supported the ends of their own societies and in doing so supported the destruc tion. The perennial enactment within and among societies of the parts played by Antigone and Creon goes on and on, and the meaning of the parts is utterly lost. In summary, our argument reaches further than proof that the social scientist's idea that he knows how to proceed impartially is an illusion. It raises the question whether there is any illusion in Objectivity and SocialScience 47 modern society more destructive than this one. It takes no great wisdom to see that if there is no genuine knowledge in the world on moral questions, the social scientist makes a bad situation worse when he supports the claims of various groups to what they imag ine are their rights without first finding a sound basis for rights.

The effect of such support is obviously to intensify strife within and among societies. NOTES 1. The gist of Berkeley's argument is in the first few pages of his Principles of Human Knowledge. This work will be unintelligible to anyone un familiar with the foundations of modern science. Everybody knows, or ought to know, that these were laid by Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, Newton-to name only a few of the leaders. What everybody does not know-and everybody here includes most of the people working in the sciences-is that when the foundations of modern science were laid, no place was provided for anything objective as distinguished from subjec tive. 2. William Temple, Nature) Man and God (Macmillan, 1934, 1949), p. 74. 3. (Macmillan, 1945, 1949), p. 64. 4. Philosophical Studies (Humanities Press, 1951), p. 330. 5. Book III, Part I, Section I. The position taken by Herodotus is often adopted in contemporary discussion without any recognition of the fact that it was taken by him and by many others after him. Here, for in stance, is a passage from Dewey: "All that is needed is acceptance of the view that moral subject matter is also spatially and temporally quali fied." (Reconstruction in Philosophy) New American Library Mentor Book, Introduction, p. 13.) But, of course, this is not "all that is needed."

And so Dewey says further (p. 27): "Nothing is more intellectually futile (as well as practically impossible) than to suppose harmony and order can be achieved except as new ends and standards, new moral principles, are first developed with a reasonable degree of clarity and system." Obviously ends, standards, and moral principles that are not so spatially and temporally qualified as to make a reasonable measure of harmony and order impossible are what is needed. It is not clear that there is in the world today any more knowledge of how to meet this need than there was in the days of Herodotus and Sophocles. Dewt y certainly added nothing to this knowledge. His philosophy is, as Bertrand Russell said, a power philosophy. 6. From the "First Anniversary." 7. Science and the Modern World (Macmillan, 1925, 1948), p. 80. 8. Ibid. 9. Page references are to the New American Library Edition.

48 Scientism and Values 10. From the Preface to the first edition of The Critique of Pure Reason. 11. The General Theory of Value (Harvard, 1926, 1954), p. 115. 12. The edition from which this is quoted is a superb example of the art of translating and editing at its best. It is Greek Plays in Modern Trans lation, edited by Dudley Fitts (Dial Press, 1947). 13. Book III, ch. 37. 14. Book III, ch. 38. 15. Edward A. Shils and Henry A. Finch, eds., Max Weber on the Methodology of the Social Sciences (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1949), p. 83. 16. Ibid., p. 56. 17. Ibid., p. 24. 18. Ibid., p. 34. 19. Pragmatism (Longmans, 1943), p. 263. 20. Discourse on Method, Part IV. 21. Appearance and Reality (Oxford, 1940), p. 280. 22. Ibid., p. 282. 23. Science and the Modern W orId, p. 263. 24. Morris Cohen and Ernest Nagel, Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method (Harcourt, Brace, 1934), pp. 217 f. 25. A. J. Ayer, Language J Truth and Logic (Dover, n.d.), p. 41.

26. L. J. Henderson, cited in Talcott Parsons, Structure of Social Action (McGraw-Hill, 1937), p. 41. 27. Morris Lazerowitz, The Structure of Metaphysics (Humanities Press, 1955), p. 4. Lazerowitz uses the hunter story to illustrate what he charac terizes as "a likeness between many philosophical views and grotesque fiction." The application of the story is far more general than Lazerowitz suggests. The quotation that we have given from Whitehead on the subjectivity of modern science is not only literally true of modern science, but very few people in either modern science or philosophy realize how deep the modern world is in the bog of subjectivity. 28. (Macmillan, 1947), p. Ill. 29. Page 4. 30. Author's Preface (Harper, 1944). 31. Appendix II, "A Methodological Note on Facts and Valuations in Social Science." Myrdal's argument in this note is sorely in need of extensive analysis. His superficiality is of a different type from that of Miss Benedict. He uses "science" to conjure with, just as Miss Benedict does. But unlike Miss Benedict, he sees the need for ethics in social science. Yet here also he conjures. His ethics, by his own account, has no mo{e relation to reality than do these marks on this paper. His "ethics" is entirely arbitrary. It is, of course, within the power of man to adopt an arbitrary "ethics," but it is not within his power to escape the consequences. We see Myrdal's superficiality only when we see that modern science has made the idea of objectivity wholly animistic and that arguments such as that of Myrdal can be used to justify Nazism just as well as what Myrdal argues for as the "American Creed." It is just about the worst thing that could happen for the less fortunate people of the United States and the rest of the world that the study of the Objectivity and SocialScience 49 problems of freedom and equality and justice should be conducted so regularly at the superficial level at which Myrdal was content to make his study. It is not possible to express a more severe criticism of social science than to say that social scientists generally are content to work at such superficial levels and seem unaware that there are any deeper levels at which work needs to be done.