Abstract
DURING the Tourth annual conference of the Rationalist press Association, heald at Magdalen College, Oxford during August 5-9, the main theme for discussion was "Science and Society". In his presidential address, which opened the proceedings Prof. A. E. Health (University College, Swansea) dealt with scientific method, as applied to the social field. Referring to the opinion held in some quarters that as soon as we enter the domain of social and political affairs something other than normal scientific procedure is called for, he asserted that science is only common-sense reflexion more critically and more consistently applied, and that any field of human experience can become a science. What makes a study scientific is not the nature of the things it deals with but the way it deals with them. The first step in scientific method is the critical observation of any given body of facts, and the second is the setting out of these facts in some sort of scientific order ; then that order is tested and we are led to new facts which in turn have to be ordered, and so on in an endless series. In saying that reflexion upon facts becomes scientific by becoming more critical and systematic, we must not suppose that the change was an easy one ; it involved centuries of human struggle. Resistance to scientific treatment was particularly strong in human and social studies because we lack the courage to be critical in matters which come too closely home to our frail human nature. This perpetual struggle to put statements about our experience in testable form is not, however, the end of the story. In the less mature sciences there may still be alternative modes of ordering the facts. Social studies are still at the stage when there are many divergent possible modes of dealing with the same body of facts concerning human behaviour. To pass from J. B. Watson to Freud, or from Jung to Adler, is like moving into different worlds ; yet all these psychologists dealt with the same human facts, however different the terms they employed to interpret them and throw them into fruitful combinations. Our trouble in applying scientific method to the social sciences would be overcome if we could realize that novelty is a directly observable fact in the development of men and society. The theory of evolution is a critical step in our methods of thinking because it involves a recognition of novelty in science : if we are to master and direct our world, we must learn how to cope not only with the orderly but also with the novel aspects of the universe, even when that novelty is of our own making. Scientific method can be applied by taking into account the pliancy of life, thus achieving some measure of control out of the very heart of the unexpected and incalculable.
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The Impact of Science on Society. Nature 164, 555–557 (1949). https://doi.org/10.1038/164555a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/164555a0