Abstract
THIS excellent work gives the prolegomena to an applied science of society. The authors think that sociology has reached the stage occupied by the physical sciences a century ago; and that scientific method can be strictly applied to help the theoretical and practical progress of sociology. Such developments as the adoption of an official audit in public administration, the recruitment of civil servants and the organisation of trade unions, are not merely the outcome of blind forces hazily understood by the trial and error method, but the result of hypotheses actually arrived at by social workers and philanthropists working along the lines of scientific method. The authors of this work then discuss questions relating to the mental equipment of the social investigator, to the study and compiling of social facts and to the use of statistics. The great difference between social and physical sciences is given by their object: “Treasure your exceptions” should be the motto of the first; “scrap your exceptions” seems to be the physicist's point of view. Hence the social problem is not to find out how to get men and women to fit into society, but how to make a society into which will fit the men and women with all their differences and peculiarities of character, health and occupation.
Methods of Social Study.
Sidney
Beatrice
Webb
By. Pp. vii + 263. (London, New York and Toronto: Longmans, Green and Co., Ltd., 1932.) 8s. 6d. net.
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G., T. Methods of Social Study . Nature 131, 748 (1933). https://doi.org/10.1038/131748b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/131748b0