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The Principle of Limits: With Special Reference to the Social Sciences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Jules Henry
Jules Henry*
Affiliation:
Washington University
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Extract

The following paper is a continuation of an attempt (2) to explore the possibility of intensifying sociological analysis through the development of heuristic devices. The value of heuristic devices lies, so it seems to me, in their essential simplicity and the consequent broadness of their applicability. A heuristic device differs from a law in that it is not an if, then type of proposition. It is a guide to analysis rather than a statement of the necessary issue of the analysis. It suggests how the analysis may be carried forward rather than states how it must come out. The principle of limits as presented below is an attempt to show how this relatively simple heuristic device may be used in a variety of areas of social analysis.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , July 1950 , pp. 247 - 253
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1950

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Footnotes

∗

Pitrim Sorokin published a paper with practically the same title in Social Process, 1932. Sorokin's paper, The Principle of Limits, urged: (1) That “there is a logical basis for contending that causality between two phenomena exists only within certain limits and that outside these bounds the relationship either disappears or becomes radically altered in nature.” (2) That there is no such thing as a “limitless perpetual direction of social processes but that we have rather ”a number of different attempts begun, developed, and halted … Hence there is … not indefinite direction but short or long-term sharp, radical turns in the direction of the process.“ Alexander Goldenweiser's Theory of Limited Possibilities, Journal of American Folklore, Volume 26, 1913, was a well-considered attempt to explain certain aspects of cultural variability through analysis of the factors operating to limit variation. Thus both these scholars have attempted to apply this mode of Western thought to the analysis of particular problems. The contention of this paper, however, is that this is an inherent mode of Western thought and ought to be objectified so that it will become a tool used consciously in the analysis of all aspects of social process.

References

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