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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 - 3. The History and Logic of the Hidden Valuations in Social Science
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1052 An American Dilemma
The materials of social planning may, in general, be summed up in the phrase “social
forces.” They are what social planners have to deal with. What social forces may consist
of does not concern us at the moment, but the effect of social forces is to produce motion.
In the case of the above illustration the motion is in population growth. In fact, motion
is the principal characteristic of our age, for we call it the “age of change.” Social
planning deals with changes, either with changes already started, or in planning new
changes. It is difficult to name a single phase of our contemporary civilization that is
not undergoing change. Some parts are changing more rapidly than others. It is this
fact that we are living in a changing world which is the justification for asking the
question: What is likely to happen? . . .
Technology enters the analysis at this point because these changes which are taking
place are in large part instigated by invention. Thus many of the changes in international
relations are affected by the airplane, just as in an earlier generation changes taking
place in the relations of warring peoples were affected by gunpowder. Hence the knowl-
edge of inventions supplies us partly with the answer to the question of what is going
to happen. The wishes of human beings are relatively stable from age to age insofar as
heredity or the physiological foundations are concerned. They take different expressions,
however, because of the different social conditions in which men live. New inventions
start changes in the behavior of mankind. They are new stimuli to which human beings
respond.* »
The social scientists we have cited could not have reached their negative views on
planned and induced social change unless guided by a set of general assumptions in their
selection and interpretation of the empirical data. This implies that they have introduced
valuations along with facts in deriving conclusions relative to what can be and should
be the nature of man’s practical efforts. We all claim that our factual or theoretical
studies alone cannot logically lead to a practical recommendation. A practical or valua-
tional conclusion can be derived only when there is at least one valuation among the
premises. When our premises consist exclusively of facts, only a factual conclusion
can result. If we proceed otherwise, and if we, further, denounce valuations, we are
thus constantly attempting the logically impossible: From certain observations con-
cerning the causation of a social phenomenon we jump to the valuational conclusion that
we can do nothing to change this phenomenon because it has such and such a causation.
To illustrate this common fallacy we have chosen examples from the writings of only a
few leading sociologists. The specific error that is common to these three men—Sumner,
Park, and Ogburn—has been with social science from the beginning and is still quite
general in contemporary social science. This specific error is not that of observing a
deep-rooted and all-pervasive social causation. The observations of such causation made by
the particular authors chosen for exemplification are rather monumental contributions
to knowledge of a most significant nature. The specific logical error is that of inferring
from the facts that men can and should make no effort to change the “natural” out-
come of the specific forces observed. This is the old do-nothing (laissez-faire) bias of
“realistic” social science.
To bring out the nature of this bias and demonstrate the arbitrariness thereby
inserted into research, we may consider the same facts that have been observed by
Sumner, Park, and Ogburn and add to them an explicit and dynamic value premise
• William F. Ogburn, “Technology and Planning,” in George B. Galloway and Associates,
Planning for America ( 1 94 1 ) , pp. 179-180.
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