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The Concept of Law in the Social Sciences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

George A. Lundberg
George A. Lundberg*
Affiliation:
Bennington College
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Extract

It is the thesis of this paper that the term scientific law can and should mean in the social sciences exactly what it means in any of the other sciences. There seems to be considerable agreement among scientists as well as others that a scientific law is a generalized and verifiable statement, within measurable degrees of accuracy, of how certain events occur under stated conditions. If I were to attempt a more specific statement I would say that a law is (1) a group of verbal or mathematical symbols (2) designating an unlimited number of defined events in terms of a limited number of reactions (3) so that the performance of specified operations always yields predictable results within measurable limits.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , April 1938 , pp. 189 - 203
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1938

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Footnotes

1

Read at the Second Conference on Methods in Philosophy and Science, New York City, November 28, 1937.

References

Notes

2 E. Bisbee, “Objectivity in the Social Sciences”, Philosophy of Science, July 1937, pp. 371-82.

3 Ibid., p.372.

4 Ibid., p. 372.

5 For a useful distinction between axioms and postulates, see E. V. Huntington, “The Method of Postulates,” Philosophy of Science, Oct. 1937, p. 484.

6 For example, Morris Cohen's categorical statement, “Psychic forces are not physical forces.” Reason and Nature, p. 360. The difficulty is further illustrated by the preposterous accusation that those who find the framework and methods of the other natural sciences also adequate for the social sciences deny the relevance of anticipated social ends as a partial determinant of social action. (See R. K. Merton, “Durkheim's Division of Labor in Society”, American Journal of Sociology, November 1934, p. 321. “Anticipated ends”, whenever they are incentives to action exist in the form of words or other symbols, to which the organism responds as it does to other stimuli. The same is true of memories, “values”, “meanings”, “ideals”, “ideas”, and all the rest of the phenomena which are alleged to be unique in the social sciences.

7 For a criticism of operationalism see R. B. Lindsay, “A Critique of Operationalism in Physics”, Philosophy of Science, October 1937, pp. 456-470. The criticism is really not of operationalism so much as of sole reliance on it. It is doubtless true that until strictly operational concepts are developed, non-operational concepts may be useful. This concession may be made without detracting in any way from the desirability of operationalism as a goal to be sought. The operationalist viewpoint is well stated in P. W. Bridgman, The Logic of Modern Physics (Macmillan 1932). Also A. F. Bentley, Linguistic Analysis of Mathematics, ch. 13. (Principia Press, Bloomington, 1935.)

8 Bisbee, Op. Cit. p. 374. For a detailed refutation of the whole viewpoint here under criticism see Read Bain “The Concept of Complexity in Sociology” Social Forces. Dec. 1929 and Mar. 1930. Also G. A. Lundberg, “Is Sociology Too Scientific?” Sociologus Sept. 1933. Also “The Nature of Sociological Laws”, Jr. of Social Philosophy (forthcoming).

9 Ibid. p. 378. In illustrating this point the author uses several examples which betray in a striking manner the superficiality of her analysis, as far as proving the impossibility of social laws is concerned. That water freezes at 32°F is held up as an example of the invariant validity of the laws of physics as a result of the stability of their subject matter. What would become of the reliability of this law if water were not first defined as H2O instead of including under that word all fluids that our unaided senses identify as water, and if instead of a thermometer's reading of temperatures, the subjective estimates of different individuals were accepted? “Water” would under these conditions, “freeze” under such apparently varied “temperatures” as to make this law as unreliable as social laws appear to be. See also this author's amazing illustrations of the alleged shortcomings of the “law” of supply and demand and of Cooley's “laws” of self-estimation. It should be unnecessary to point out that the conclusions drawn flow entirely from a postulate of complete “free will” in man as contrasted with the rest of nature and not from any intrinsic nature of social situations.

10 This appears to be implied, for example, in such a statement as the following: “In the case of most of the psychosocial qualities this quantitative description has been and will probably remain useless, partly because these qualities do not have any unit of quantitative measurement, partly because the fundamental categories which compose the frame-work of reference in the social and cultural sciences are predominantly qualitative.” [Italics mine]—P. A. Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics, Vol. I, p. 159. Elsewhere (Vol. II, pp. 21-22) this author expresses views quite compatible with mine as to the permissibility of quantifying formally gradations now expressed only in terms of “more” or “less”.

11 Lundberg, G. A. “The Thoughtways of Contemporary Sociology”, American Sociological Review, October 1936.

12 References to some of these will be found in my paper “Quantitative Methods in Social Psychology”, American Sociological Review, Feb. 1936, pp. 50-51.

13 V. Pareto has analyzed this process in terms of residues, derivations, and non-logical thoughtways. See his The Mind and Society (Harcourt Brace 1935). Vol. 1.

14 Journal of the American Statistical Association, March 1936, p. 27. Discussion by Henry Margenau of paper by E. Nagel “The Meaning of Probability”.