Our purpose in this paper is to characterize the methodological role of judges in clinical psychology. What, methodologically speaking, do the judges do for the experimenter in this area? Why, and in what ways, are the experimenter's procedures more respectable, his results more valid, when he employs judges? In order to present a concrete example of the use of judges we begin by describing in some detail a procedure actually employed in the testing of an hypothesis. Next we contrast this procedure with a prima facie analogous one from chemistry, noting that an appeal to judges here would be clearly superfluous. Our problem then presents itself in the form: “Why these sorts of differences between chemistry and clinical psychology?”. As the argument develops it becomes clear that the methodological significance of what is called “clinical insight” (or “intuition”) must be carefully considered in any attempt to understand the peculiar importance of the judges’ role in psychology. It is argued that the absence of precise criteria for typical concepts of clinical psychology is closely connected with the frequent appeals to clinical insight. And it is urged that the full significance of the employment of judges emerges only when seen in the light of this conceptual uncertainty, and of the clinician's attempt to operate scientifically in spite of that uncertainty.

One of the tasks with which communication engineers are presented is that of devising a mechanism by which a significant sequence of words, a message, produced by somebody, the sender of the message, is reproduced at some other place, with the shortest practical time lag. The reproduction must be such that the receiver of the message will be able to understand what the sender meant by his message, at least, if he knows the sender's language (or, perhaps, his specific use of the language). The following illustration is typical: A writes on a sheet of paper “I love you” and wishes that B, 3000 miles away, should become aware of the full content of this message, with little delay and at a low cost. There will be institutions, in a capitalistic society, which will compete with each other in providing A, for a price, with the required service. Those companies which perform these services most satisfactorily, i.e., with an overall better combination of faithfulness, time lag, and cost, will get the job. The executives of these companies will hire engineers and put them to work on improving this overall combination.

American social scientists, with the possible exception of the anthropologists, have typically been ethnocentric in their writings and research. Most of their studies are simply unique to a particular institutional complex, possessing little generality beyond a single socio-cultural system. Nevertheless, social scientists nowadays are evincing increased interest in comparative studies. They are coming to realize that many of their generalizations may be found wanting when tested in the laboratory of world cultures. For the solution of many significant problems cross-cultural comparison seems essential—the relationships among the variables involved must be examined under diverse cultural conditions.

In relating the problem of comparison to that of conceptualization, Dr. Sjoberg brings into focus a central methodological problem of social science. For to compare is to discover unity in diversity and differences among similarities, that is, to uncover structure. The first act in this process is to name the parts and the relations among them, and naming, of course, both stems from and induces conceptualizations.

It has been argued repeatedly that the modern study of social and cultural evolution took its inspiration and form from Charles Darwin's Origin of Species and Descent of Man. In 1920, Robert H. Lowie (27; pp. 55–56) observed that it was after evolutionary principles had been accepted in biology that they were applied to social phenomena, and that Lewis Henry Morgan was among the first to make the application. Sir James George Frazer (16; p. 581), at about the same time, dated the birth of anthropology from the promulgation of the evolution theory of Darwin and Wallace in 1859 and maintained that “this conception of evolution … supplies a basis for the modern science of anthropology.” Harry Elmer Barnes (1; pp. 25–26) similarly traced the development of anthropology from the theory of organic evolution and advised the student that he “need not concern himself with the history of method in sociology before the entry of Darwinian concepts.”

From the beginnings of thought, through the period of ancient Greece and including the medieval and early modern period, knowledge was sought after and looked upon as an integrated totality. In recent years certain scientific fields have progressed at greatly accelerated rates, leading to extreme complexity. The specialization necessary for comprehension of any of these fields has tended to destroy the integration of knowledge. Yet there are some hopeful signs amid the confusion of modern philosophy. The present note attempts to sketch a perspective toward integration of a large portion of scientific knowledge, the perspective which has been opened by modern researches and was not known at the time when the old dichotomies of mechanism versus vitalism, determination versus freedom, cause versus purpose, etc., arose. The discussion was stimulated by a series of lectures at Carleton College given by Henry Margenau, lectures which seek encouragingly to reverse the trend toward rigid compartmentalization. Its substance is drawn largely from two recent books, What Is Life? by Erwin Schrödinger (1) and Cell and Psyche by Edmund W. Sinnott (2).

Contemporary philosophers interested in value theory appear to be largely concerned with questions of the following sort:

What is value?

What is the meaning of the word ‘good’?

Does the attribution of value to an object have a cognitive, or merely an emotive, significance?

The first question is metaphysical; to ask it is analogous to asking in physics:

What is matter?

What is electricity?

The others are generally treated as semantical questions; to ask them is analogous to asking in statistics:

What is the meaning of the word ‘probable’?

Does an attribution of probability express an objective fact, or merely a subjective attitude?