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Social Science Objectivity and Value Neutrality: Historical Problems and Projections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 July 2024

Irving Louis Horowitz

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For the most part, American sociology has accepted the appealing formula of neutrality with regard to political and ideological values, a formula especially put forward by the functionalist school. It has the golden merit of posing issues in a seemingly natural science manner. The sociologist can adopt the physicist's pose toward his work. We provide society with carefully sifted information, comparative analysis of social structures, and at the upper range, the likely consequences of performing or not performing an action in terms of the given diagnosis. The social scientist using a functionalist philosophy can feel free of responsibility at a decision making level. Whether society decides to employ or ignore the provided data is held to be a matter of indifference, a situation requiring moral wisdom rather than social theory. Without minimizing the sound contributions of the function-Structure approach, particularly in overcoming the provincialism and conceit of the pre-functionalist schools of anthropology, there is a sure moral undercurrent in a method which sees the social scientist as diagnostician and society as a patient. It has the appearance of satisfying the historic identification of social theory to social welfare, and no less an emotional identification with a neutral-objective image culled from physics. Social history becomes a variable in the preparation of trend reports and thereby trivialized into a moment in the functionalist scheme.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 10 , Issue 39 , September 1962 , pp. 17 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © 1962 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

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2 Cf. Irving L. Horowitz, "Laws and Levels in the Sociology of Knowledge," Philosophy, Science and the Sociology of Knowledge. Springfield, Charles C. Thomas, 1961, pp. 112-19.

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9 Auguste Comte, Ibid., Vol. II, p. 104.

10 Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (ed. Edwin Cannan). New York, Random House, 1937, pp. 898-99.

11 Cf. Rollin Chambliss, Social Thought from Hammurabi to Comte. New York, Henry Holt & Co., 1954, p. 400.

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15 Cf. among others, F. H. Bartlett, Sigmund Freud: A Marxian Essay. London, Victor Gollancz, 1938; R. Osborne, Freud and Marx. London, Victor Gollancz, 1937; N. O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History. Middletown, Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1959; and H. Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud, Boston, The Beacon Press, 1955.

16 Cf. Wilhelm Dilthey, Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften, in Gesam melte Schriften, Vol. I. Leipzig-Berlin, B. G. Teubner, 1921 (reprinted 1959). As later efforts demonstrated, this study did not have the intended effect of settling the question of the natural or socio-historical "essence" of human studies.

17 Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (1930). New York, Doubleday & Company, 1958, p. 89.

18 Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Sociology. New York, D. Appleton & Company, 1896, Vol. II, part V, pp. 568-640.

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21 Cf. Emile Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method. Chicago, The University of Chicago, 1938, esp. pp. 141-46.

22 Max Weber's two most famous statements on the relationship of fact to value are contained in the Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre. Tübingen, 1922. They have been separately translated. See: "The Meaning of ‘Ethical Neu trality' in Sociology and Economics," The Methodology of the Social Sciences (edited and translated by E. A. Shils and H. A. Finch). Glencoe, The Free Press, 1949, esp. pp. 3-8; and, "Science as a Vocation," From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (edited and translated by H. H. Gerth and C. W. Mills). New York, Oxford University Press, 1946, pp. 143-47.

23 Emile Durkheim, Rules of Sociological Method, p. 142.

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26 Emile Durkheim, Op. cit., p. 118.

27 Bronislaw Malinowski, "An Analysis of War," Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays. Glencoe, The Free Press, 1948, pp. 306-07.

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31 Emile Durkheim, Ibid., p. 144.

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35 Max Weber, "The Meaning of Discipline," From Max Weber, pp. 253-64.

36 Max Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences, esp. pp. 59-63.

37 Cf. Irving L. Horowitz, Philosophy, Science and the Sociology of Knowledge, p. 64.

38 Reinhard Bendix, Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait. New York, Double day & Co., 1960, pp. 455-56.

39 Cf. Marvin Farber, Naturalism and Subjectivism, pp. 297-329. See also, Howard Becker and H. Otto Dahlke, "Max Scheler's Sociology of Knowledge," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. II, 1940, pp. 310-22.

40 Max Scheler, Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos. Darmstadt, O. Reichl, 1928, p. 112; Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die Materiale Wertethik. Halle, M. Niemeyer, 1927, p. 412.

41 Karl Mannheim, Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1952, p. 175.

42 Karl Mannheim, Ibid., p. 178.

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44 Karl Mannheim, Ibid., p. 184.

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47 Robert M. MacIver, Society: A Textbook of Sociology. New York, Rinehart & Co., 1937, p. 520.

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49 Ruth Benedict, Patterns of Culture. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1934 (Penguin edition, 1946), pp. 256-57.

50 Robert Bierstedt (editor), The Making of Society: An Outline of Sociology. Revised edition. New York, Random House (Modern Library), 1959, Preface, p. v.

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53 George A. Lundberg, C. C. Schrag, and O. N. Larsen, Ibid., p. 721.

54 Bernard Berelson, Graduate Education in the United States. New York, McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1960, esp. pp. 233-60.

55 Cf. in particular, Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1960; and Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1960. In this connection see, Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 89, No. 4, Fall 1960.

56 Leopold von Wiese, Systematic Sociology (ed. Becker), New York, 1932, p. 8, also pp. 64-8.

57 Cf. Logan Wilson, The Academic Man. New York, Oxford Univ. Press, 1942, p. 33; Bernard Barber, Science and the Social Order. Glencoe, The Free Press, 1952, pp. 142-43; and Bernard Berelson, Graduate Education in the United States, p. 226.

58 Stringfellow Barr, Purely Academic. New York, Simon & Schuster, 1958, pp. 51-2.

59 William A. Robson, The University Teaching of Social Sciences : Political Science. Paris, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 1954, p. 116.

60 Ernest R. Hilgard and Daniel Lerner, "The Person: Subject and Object of Science and Policy," The Policy Sciences : Recent Developments in Scope and Method (eds. D. Lerner and H. D. Lasswell). Stanford, Stanford Univ. Press, 1951, p. 38.

61 Paul F. Lazarsfeld, "Reflections on Business," The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. LXV, No. 1, July 1959, pp. 1-26.

62 Paul F. Lazarsfeld, "Reflections on Business," The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. LXV, No. 1, July 1959, pp. 1-26.

63 Marvin K. Opler, "Values in Group Psychotherapy," The International Journal of Social Psychiatry, Vol. IV, No. 4, Spring 1959, p. 297.

64 Frank Riessman and S. M. Miller, "Psychotherapy for Whom?," Bard Psychology Journal, Vol. I, No. 4, Spring 1959, pp. 12-14. See in this connection, Melvin Tumin, "Some Social Requirements for Effective Community Development," Community Development Review, No. 11, Dec. 1958.

65 Robert Redfield, "Relations of Anthropology to the Social Sciences and to the Humanities," Anthropology Today: An Encyclopedic Inventory (ed. A. L. Kroeber). Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1933, pp. 728-38.

* This theme was the subject of two lectures by Professor Irving L. Horowitz at the Universities of Buffalo and Syracuse in 1961.