"Thou shalt not answer questionnaires
Or quizzes upon world affairs,
Nor with compliance take any test.
Thou shalt not sit with statisticians nor commit
A social science.'' - W. H. Auden, Note on Intellectuals."...the humanities shop has turned out to be selling diverse and ill-assorted antiques, decaying and even dustier [than the social sciences], while business gets worse and worse. Social science has proved more robust, more in harmony with a world dominated by natural science, and while losing its inspiration and evangelical fervor, has proved useful in different aspects of modern life, as the mere mention of economics and psychology indicates." - Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind.
"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist the facts to suit the theories, instead of theories to suit facts." - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle?s Sherlock Holmes.
Youth is open to possibilities and carries a confidence and even hubris about subduing the world before it. As a youthful science in the nineteenth century, physics possessed its portion of presumptuous certitude. Success, particularly at computing the precise future position of the planets, persuaded some physicists that, given the position and velocity of every object, the future state of the universe could be perfectly predicted. It was not until the twentieth century, when ironically, physicists could explain the universe at a more fundamental level that they could precisely place limits on their ability to know. Physicists retain much of their arrogance, but have at least placed a rigid upper bound on it.
The social sciences began this century with much of the nineteenth century's confidence in the application of the scientific method to social problems. Indeed, the dominant ideology of the beginning of the century, socialism, asserted legitimacy and inevitability by claiming to be the "scientific" way to manage society. Unfortunately, social institutions and arrangements are inherently difficult to study. The results of social science studies can too easily depend upon the biases and preconceptions the social scientist brings. Ben Wattenberg of PBS's Think Tank recently discussed with Seymour Lipset and James Q. Wilson, both former presidents of the American Political Science Association, the temptations potentially trapping social scientists. Several examples serve to illustrate.
Anthropologist Margaret Mead wanted to believe that sexual taboos were the product of arbitrary social constructs in the West and sexual roles were culturally and not biologically based. Such observations would accord with the conventional wisdom of the elites at the time. Mead's findings in Coming of Age in Samoa confirmed these notions. However, Mead was not sufficiently fluent in the Samoan language and certainly far too credulous of fabulous stories told by young Samoan girls because she wanted to believe them. Consequently, Meade leaped to unfounded conclusions and at best drew a caricature of Samoan society.
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