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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - Appendices - 2. A Methodological Note on Facts and Valuations in Social Science - 4. The Points of View Adopted in This Book
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1058 An American Dilemma
Prior to research, therefore, are complicated theories. The architecture of these
theories is arbitrary except when they are intentionally founded upon a definition of
relevant interests. This is true no matter how much eflFort is invested in selecting terms
of low valuational content and no matter how remote from public interest the causal
analysis is. When one is out to determine such a simple thing as the level of “real wages”
in a community, for example, he has to rack his soul to decide whether to base his
calculations on hourly rates or on annual wages: whether to consider articles outside
of the staple commodities as necessities of consumption, whether to consider certain
items, the consumption of which is not “customary,” as necessities because all dieticians
think so, and generally speaking, how to decide the weights in the consumption budgets
used for constructing a cost of living index. In a world of change and variation there
can be no such thing as an “ideal index”; in the final analysis, the weights have always
to be chosen upon the basis of what one’s interest in a study is. In comparing Negroes
and whites, decisions must be taken in such problems as: is it more proper to make
the comparison directly or to take into account the fact that Negroes are concentrated
in the lower occupational brackets, in poorer and more backward regions of the coun-
try, and that they have been discriminated against in education and in other respects?
®
These considerations sound trite to any scientist who is at all aware of his methodol-
ogy. What we wish to point out, however, is that every choice involves valuations. One
does not escape valuations by restricting his research to the discovery of “facts.” The
very attempt, so prevalent in recent years, to avoid valuations by doing research that is
simply factual and without use for practical or political eflforts involves in itself a
valuation. We hasten to explain that we are not criticizing pure fact-finding. Fact-
finding is indispensable for the solution of most of the problems—both practical
and theoretical—that we encounter. The criticism is directed against fact-seeking that
is done without a problem. The full statement of a problem. Including the decision
of scope, direction, hypothesis, classification principles, and the definition of all terms
used, renders explicit the valuations necessary in fact-finding research. The author can,
of course, explicitly disavow any practical interest and declare that he personally finds
that the topic and the hypothesis appeal to him esthetically—or that he has made all
his choices at random. If, however, practical usefulness is an aim in science, even
the direction of research becomes dependent upon much wider valuations concerning
society.
It should be stressed that this complication of a science which is not mere “art for
art’s sake” does not in the least decrease the demands upon objectivity in research. On
the contrary, specification of valuations aids in reaching objectivity since it makes
explicit what otherwise would be only implicit. Facts may be scientifically recorded and
analyzed with explicit value premises as well as without them, and this can actually
be accomplished the better in the former case since the explicit value premises focus
the investigator’s attention upon the valuations which, if hidden, are the roots of
biases, since they generally set a standard of relevance and significance. This is true
also when the analysis proceeds to draw practical conclusions. The conclusions must
simply be remembered to be only as valid as the premises, which is true in all science.
In fact, only when the premises are stated explicitly is it possible to determine how valid
the conclusions are.
* See Richard bterner and Associates, The Negr6*s Share (1943), prepared for study;
pp. 3-
9*
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