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Objectivity in the Social Sciences
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2022
Extract
To be scientific is to be objective. This is a sine qua non in the social scientists’ efforts to keep their researches on a par with those of the natural scientists. The extreme differences of subject matter in the two fields, however, make it difficult to maintain an even standard of objectivity. Whether objectivity is defined in the strict Cartesian sense or in a broader sense also makes a difference. The Cartesian meaning threatens to enslave the social sciences to Physics as the Lord of All Sciences, and this possibility is so familiar that it needs but brief comment. A broader interpretation of objectivity meets with complications which are only inadequately recognized as yet, and which may call for reinterpretation of the scope of science or else may open up new and independent avenues of opportunity beyond the limitations of science.
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- Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1937
References
1 Tugwell, R. G., Editor: “The Trend of Economics,” p. 479.
2 Reports of the Board of Education and the commission of investigation, Cincinnati, Ohio, spring of 1936.
3 For an interesting view on subjectivity in measurements in physics, see article by Douglas McGregor on “Scientific Measurement and Psychology,” Psychological Review, May, 1935.
4 For my initial clue to this point, I am indebted to an article by Van de Walle, “A Fundamental Difference between the Natural and Social Sciences” in the Journal of Philosophy, September 29, 1932.
5 A. N. Whitehead, “The Function of Reason,” pp. 8 and 12. Parentheses mine.
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