AG

II

SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN THE

SOCIAL SCIENCES

GITATION concerning social questions is abundant in these days, and, whatever its merits, is peculiarly easy. Enthusiasm and ignorance are wedded, and the results announced from the housetops speak for themselves, being many times mere sound and fury, signifying nothing. Schemes for the immediate abolition of the present social order and the bringing in of a new heaven and earth are abundant. Guessing at half and multiplying by two seems to be the order of procedure. Any objection as to the final working out of any such proposal is met by the retort, "If you don't accept my scheme of reform, what is yours?"

To such a question the best answer is a motion to adjourn. Patent medicines, get-rich-quick schemes, and an immediate social Utopia, are

much alike in that the promises are lurid and the results nil. Imagine the first row around and then go ahead, may be all right for the old lady knitting a stocking, because she has had a good deal of practice in knitting, but it will hardly do for the social reformer, who should point out a way from the old to the new.

The fact is that no change, unless rooted and grounded in experience, is of much value. Experience is the guide of life, and the wise man, while availing himself of the wisdom of the past, does not wish to repeat its follies. Pioneering when not necessary is an expensive luxury. Gladstone, for instance, said, "The American Constitution is the greatest instrument ever struck off at one time from the brain of man." Now, whatever may be the merits or demerits of that great document, one thing is certain, and that is, it was not struck off, but rather was the result of past political thinking, colonial experience, and the proved weakness of the rope of sand which had held the jealous colonies together during the Revolution. Doctrinaire theories were relegated to the rear, and the need of an efficient central government was put to the forefront by the members of the convention. The only absolutely new thing in the instrument, the Electoral College, has not worked out as designed nor has it fulfilled the hopes of its inventors. The Eng

lish system of government without a written constitution in a purely logical sense is one of shreds and patches full of anomalies, but it works, and the reason for its working is that it is based on facts and not theories, and is the outgrowth of a thousand years of experience in government.

Experience, history, and observation, are the bases of social science. Investigation is the first step in any social study, for, without it, theories are of little value. Herbert Spencer's definition of a tragedy, according to Huxley's joke, is in point: "A tragedy is a theory killed by a fact." Facts are multitudinous and life is short, and so it is recommended that the student should make a brilliant guess, elaborate a theory, and then see if it brings order out of the welter of facts, failure only inviting to a new guess until the key is found.

This method is a perfectly scientific one, but it is well to remember that genius is but another name for hard work. Darwin, for example, believed in the value of hypothesis but worked for years gathering facts and in investigation, and then spent additional years in working over these facts and pondering over the possible relationship between them. He described himself as having "unbounded patience in long reflecting over any subject, industry in observing and collecting facts, and a fair share of invention as well as of common

291

sense. The same is largely true of Alfred Russell Wallace, the co-discoverer with Darwin of the idea of natural selection. Both men were field naturalists and had traveled widely. An interesting fact is the influence on both of them of the ideas of Malthus in his Essay on Population. Darwin read the book in 1838, and, having previously been convinced of the truth of the struggle for existence, it came to him "that under these circumstances favorable variations would tend to be preserved and unfavorable ones to be destroyed. The results of this would be the formation of a new species." Wallace, in 1858, twenty years later, while ill with fever in the Moluccas, began to think of the idea of Malthus that population increased faster than the means of subsistence, and, to use his own words, "There suddenly flashed upon me the idea of the survival of the fittest." Darwin had simply delayed publication, but magnanimously gave Wallace equal credit.' In 1859 the epoch-making work, The Origin of Species, was given to the world. The idea of evolution had been known to the Greeks, later writers had asserted it, but Darwin investigated the evidence, marshaled the facts, built on the thought of the

1 Francis Darwin, Life and Letters of Charles Darwin. Appleton Co., 1910, p. 85.

2 E. B. Poulton, Charles Darwin, Macmillan Co., 1902, p. 87; Darwin's Life and Letters, pp. 69, 472.

past, and showed the means by which development takes place. Likewise, the student of society must build on the same scientific and comparative method. As Darwin himself says:

"When on board H. M. S. Beagle as naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the organic beings inhabiting South America, and in the geological relations of the present to the past inhabitants of the continent. These facts seemed to throw some light on the origin of species-that mystery of mysteries, as it has been called by one of our greatest philosophers. On my return home it occurred to me (in 1837) that something might perhaps be made out on this question by patiently accumulating and reflecting on all sorts of facts which could possibly have any bearing on it. After five years I allowed myself to speculate on the subject, and drew up some short notes. These I enlarged, in 1844, into a sketch of the conclusions which then seemed to me probable. From that period to the present day I have steadily pursued the same object. I hope that I may be excused for entering on these personal details, as I give them to show that I have not been hasty in coming to a conclusion."

A rather curious and bizarre means of saving mental energy, or rather the betrayal of very little mentality at all, is the affixing of labels on economists and sociologists. The alumni journal of a large university recently published an article with the strange title, "Where the Conservatives Get Their 'Con'." Now the elegant and beautiful term "Con," smacking of yellow journalism, does not