The decision of the University of London to create a new chair in Social Administration was an expression, I suppose, of the importance of the social services today in the life of the community. It was also perhaps a sign that, in the eyes of the University authorities, the subject had advanced to a respectable age and had acquired some academically respectable disciples; that it had grown out of its former preoccupation with good works for the deserving poor; and that the subject now justified an academic chair, and someone to invade, on the one side, a modest corner of the territory of public administration and, on the other, some part of the broad acres of sociology.

It might be said, then, that the days when social administration, with its interest in the education of future social workers, was regarded in University circles as a poor but virtuous relation, are now coming to an end. It is an interesting speculation, but hardly justified, I think, by the arrival of a new professor. ‘Promise,’ as George Eliot remarked in Middlemarch, ‘was a pretty maid, but being poor she died unwed.’

The future of social administration depends, to some extent, on the future of the great experiments in social service which have been launched in Britain in recent years. Their future is uncertain. To this uncertainty must be added, in the teaching of social administration, the awareness of intellectual uncertainty which attends on those concerned with the study of human relations, for only now are we beginning to grope our way towards some scientific understanding of society. Uncertainty, then, is part of the price that has to be paid for being interested in the many-sidedness of human needs and behaviour. However, we draw some comfort from Karl Mannheim's thought that it is precisely our uncertainty which brings us closer to reality than is possible for those who have faith in the absolute or faith, I would add, in the pursuit of specialization.

It is customary on these occasions to begin with a broad definition of one's subject. After these preliminaries, I propose to say something about the origins of the Social Science Department.