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Research Procedure and Laws of Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Alexander Lesser
Alexander Lesser*
Affiliation:
Columbia University, New York
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Extract

When discussions of scientific method shift from natural sciences to social sciences, we tend to feel that we are turning from strict sciences to subject matters which may have achieved some measure of intellectual competence but which lack the rigor, objectivity and principles of organization found in mature science. This sense of a difference between the natural sciences and the social sciences is connected with questions of the meaning and rôle of laws. To the extent to which social and historical events have not been reduced to laws or perhaps cannot be, the disciplines which study such events are considered immature or imperfect sciences. To the extent to which social sciences do not offer predictions, they are felt to have little application to the solution of actual and immediate problems. When a bridge has to be built over a chasm, the laws of the natural sciences can be brought to bear. But when a treaty is to be drawn, where, it is asked, are the social and historical laws which can be applied to the situation?

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , July 1939 , pp. 345 - 355
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

Read at Second Conference on Methods in Philosophy and the Sciences, New School for Social Research, New York City, November, 1937; and at annual meetings of the Central Section, American Anthropological Association, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, April, 1938.

References

Notes

2 Article, Anthropology, Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, p. 100.

3 Anthropology and Modern Life, pp. 213 ff.

4 Article, Anthropology, Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, p. 100.

5 W. H. R. Rivers, Kinship and Social Organization, p. 93.

6 Article, Anthropology, Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, p. 87.

7 Anthropology and Modern Life, pp. 213 ff.

8 Idem., p. 214.