able primarily in only one dimension, with relation to one another, as masses; that is, there is little, at least very slow, modification within the masses. But social phenomena vary rapidly and largely in two dimensions, both with respect to one another as persons and within the organization of the personalities or institutions and processes themselves. People have minds and physiological processes, and groups are continually undergoing reorganization, and ' both people and groups must adjust to others of the same or different kinds. The technique of the adjustment is all the more difficult because of this internal instability. Hence, the greater difficulty experienced by the scientist in seeing social phenomena and processes as wholes and of formulating these processes abstractly in the form of definite laws or quantitative generalizations.

But the problem is not an impossible one, as is proved by the success of the statisticians of death expectancies and the construction of life-tables for the use of actuaries. The economists, among the social scientists, in the fields of finance and markets, have made most progress in arriving at quantitative generalizations, probably because they have been able to handle such a vast mass of cases that they could apply successfully their method of generalizing statistically or mathematically. This method of quantitative gen-. eralization employed by the social scientist must be by means of the forms of mathematics commonly called multiple and partial correlation and the theory of probabilities. Simpler mathematical processes would not be adequate to the masses of data which are necessary to eliminate the exceptional instances. It is reasonable to anticipate that ultimately all social phenomena which occur in vast numbers may be viewed into some unitary system as formulas, partaking of the nature of social laws, just as the phenomena of physics are capable of being so viewed or interpreted. But not only is the problem of generalizing quantitatively more difficult for the social sciences, but also the problem of the application of the social laws, that is, the problem of computing adjustments of social phenomena on the basis of variations in the concrete instances from the norm or law, must also be more difficult than in the case of the variation of concrete physical phenomena from the physical norm or law.

Σ

If there is this greater difficulty in the formulation of social laws, because of the greater complexity and variability of social phenomena, how much greater would be the task of formulating a general law of social progress. As Mr. Shafer remarked, it is not, possible to formulate such a general law of progress—at least not for the present. This, however, is quite another thing from maintaining that there is or can be no such thing as social progress. It only means that we cannot be certain whether any particular policy or event makes for progress, because we have no universal and quantitatively established norm with which to measure its value. However, if we have no accurate universal law of social progress, we may still find some guideposts on the way. Because man cannot yet see the whole meaning of his existence is no ade-* quate reason for supposing that he may not be able to perceive some parts of it and evaluate policies with varying degrees of accuracy and effectiveness. Knowledge is cumulative and from it we gradually get perspective; that is, that generalization of viewpoint which is the essence and basis of law. The denial of progress itself, in regard to the whole or any part of the behavior of man, in which the critics of the theory of social progress so fully indulge, is in itself a tacit acknowledgment of this fact of the existence of social value norms, at least on a limited scale, and constitutes an attempt to utilize them in defending a thesis or point of view. That is, it is itself an attempt to look facts or phenomena into a generalized statement or to establish a norm as a basis for the measurement or evaluation of particular events.

The biologists have not yet been able to formulate a general law of evolution with anything like mathematical exactness, either for the whole process of evolution or for any special aspect of it, such as organic evolution. Yet a special phase of evolution is presumably less complex than the whole range of social progress, which would necessarily involve the adjustment of all classes of social phenomena. All accounts of evolution are as yet verbally descriptive and even these descriptions probably have not yet reached their final statement. The scientist recognizes that he must begin, in the formulation of laws, with phenomena in more circumscribed and immediate fields. Only gradually can he hope to find a firm

footing on the more extended and far-reaching relationships, and thus approach formulations of more general import, reaching into far extensions of time and space and into correlations of vast complexity. Or, perhaps better said, he must be content at first with only vague and verbal descriptive generalizations covering phenomena of vast extent and great complexity, while he seeks successfully for more definite and quantitative laws covering the simpler phenomena nearer at hand. He can approach accurate laws for such general processes as evolution and progress only through the achievement of a vast number of constituent quantitative generalizations. It is not possible to begin with the most general laws covering the most complex and extended phenomena and then work back by deduction to the detailed specific constituent laws. This is a favorite method of the theological and metaphysical thinkers, but it is impracticable as a general method of procedure for science.

Each science begins as a collection of hitherto unorganized, data and formulas, or as a transposition and analogical transformation of data and formulas which were organized about some other concept or problem. These data and formulas become integrated about some new and persistent problem; and this systematic integration constitutes the core of the new science, to which new data and formulas are constantly being attracted and assimilated. Thus new sciences split off around new problems and complexes of problems. Some of their data they borrow from other sciences, other data they produce by means of their own investigations. In the early stages of their history they borrow more than . they produce for themselves, and consequently they are likely to be characterized as hodgepodges rather than as sciences. When they have proved their mettle by making a considerable showing, of original research, they are admitted into the sisterhood of sciences. Sociology is a good example of this process of growth toward the status of a recognized and respectable science. The older sciences have, however, gone through similar stages of development. We still recognize a distinction between the exact and the non-exact sciences, or between the aristocratic ones which work primarily with mathematical and laboratory processes and the

newcomers which still work largely or mainly with the logic of general observation in the place of laboratories, and are content with verbally descriptive formulations of principles.

But even the so-called exact sciences are not completed sciences. Rather they are like our stellar universe, with some small parts quite well known, but with other vast regions still largely unexplored and certainly not mathematically and quantitatively described or measured. Every textbook of physics is divided into books or chapters or some other major divisions, which means for the most part that the physicist is still dealing with incompletely connected regions of knowledge. For a long time the physicists treated light, heat, electricity, and sound as separate spheres of investigation. Only recently have they made marked headway toward reducing these phenomena to the same common denominator, and they are now busy working out laws and hypotheses which will reach beyond the more concrete and limited generalizations within each separate sphere of investigation and give perspective to what were formerly distinct groups of phenomena or separate spheres in physics. Physical science begins to loom before us as a unity, as one science instead of several related sciences. The scientist is learning to look across the border lands and the dark nebulous fields in between and to think and view the whole universe of his knowledge of phenomena together or as a whole. This he does through the statement of ever more generalized principles and laws, to which he never could have attained without the preliminary formulation of the more specialized laws and principles of more limited extent.

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Yet the unity which is coming into physics and chemistry through the agency of ever expanding generalization has not yet broken down the barriers between the great general sciences, although it has done something in this direction. Physics and chemistry now have much in common, although they began as wholly separate sciences centering around very distinct sets of problems.

'An excellent example of this integration of conflicting or apparently independent fields of knowledge and of principles by means of the formulation of more general and inclusive principles may be seen in the principle of relativity of Einstein, by means of which the conflict between the Newtonian mechanics and the laws of electrodynamics was resolved on a higher and more inclusive plane of generalization.

The intimacy of this relationship or overlapping will undoubtedly. increase rather than diminish or stand still. Furthermore, physics and mathematics have all but merged, and in this merger astronomy, which once enjoyed the distinction of being classed as an independent general science, has been practically swallowed up. The isolation of biology and psychology and sociology also is disappearing. Biology constantly includes more and more of biophysics and biochemistry, while psychology is becoming distinctly biological and behavioristic in character. Sociology itself has been defined as the biology and the psychology of the collective life. The meaning of all this is that the discreteness of the sciences and of scientific generalization and laws is disappearing and in its place is coming unity of viewpoint and therefore inclusiveness of generalizations on a higher plane. This unity and inclusiveness can come only through the ever broadening scope of generalizations. Thus scientific law grows to cover an ever widening portion of the universe physically and mentally, and even finally to unite these two erstwhile separate spheres. At the same time and as a consequence, man is able to see his world increasingly as a whole and to control it with greater definiteness and more completely for his ends, or at least to adjust himself to it where he cannot dominate it.

This process of ever widening integration which we see going on in the abstract fields of science through the formulation of increasingly comprehensive formulas and laws we find taking place also on the applied side in relation to social progress. The fact that we cannot visualize the whole perspective of progress and formulate final objectives and look our behavior as a whole into perspective with these formulations does not disqualify us for the formulation of some tentative norms of progress, and for the application of these norms to concrete circumstances or problems in the light of our projected ends. As the sphere of scientific generalization expands, so does our concept of the nature and conditions of progress itself. We can formulate objectives in progress only in so far as we can command scientific data and generalizations which broaden and intensify our view of the world or universe in which progress must be achieved, if it is to be achieved at all. Our con'C. A. Ellwood, Sociology and Modern Social Problems, chap. i.