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Social Forces Creating the
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Demand for Daycare
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Other Social Forces
Overreliance on Social Science for Proof
John R. Seeley
...not in any important point of comparison is there any resemblance between the natural and the social sciences. I can but summarize briefly.
...whatever else the social scientist does, he redefines and thereby and insofar alters the society. Indeed, insofar as he functions as a social scientist, he does nothing else: even when he seems to function otherwise, when he "merely" records the going definitions of his society, he has altered the general level of self-consciousness in reference to the definition, he has brought it into or to the threshold of critical awareness, and thereby altered it functionally about as radically as it can be altered. So the social scientist is - in the very performance of his scientific role - a social actor, a crucial actor, a mover and shaker, parallel in function to any formally designated politician, and probably eventually more powerful. Who was it said, "Let me write its definitions..." for the right to define is the right to make and unmake, create or destroy.
Even when this inescapable entanglement in action is recognized, a second effort is made to save some special, extraordinary and in some sense superior status or standpoint for the social scientist. It is held, briefly, that he is under the discipline of his data (and his method) and that these drive him to a position very little dependent on his personal predilections and preferences. It is usually allowed that "interest" may well direct enquiry up to the point where an object of attention is selected, but that beyond that point the scientific process somehow takes over and controls outcome.
Even if the claim were conceded, it would be almost infinitely damaging to the asserted role of the social scientist, for the right to attend to this and not that is the right to direct attention hither and not thither (that is, to adjudicate on the basis of personal sensibilities and preferences). Suppose a judge declared a free power to direct attention upon whatever in the evidence interested him; it is a near-equivalent to a proclamation that he will decide the outcome in terms of his private program.
But the claim cannot be allowed; the scientific process does not somehow take over once the object is focused under the eyepiece. For there is still the selection of the light in which the object is to be viewed, the context in which it is to be seen (actually put) and the setting of canons for discrimination between true and false, or more or less plausible propositions.
I am not saying that "reality" constrains the social
scientist in know way at all; but I am saying that the constraint
is not much (if at all) tighter than the corresponding reality
lays upon the artist, say a portraitist or painter. There is
in each case a literal infinity of non-false representations
that can be made, and which will be made in actuality is as
much poetic in motive and political in effect as any other essentially
expressive action. For that is what it is: a ritualized acting
out of an internal choice or necessity, in which the ritual
in some sense orders and hence renders comprehensible, while
in another sense it frees and hence allows the largest latitude
for the personal. (I shall not document these statements here,
but it should be obvious that one may, for instance, "account
for" delinquency, say, in countless ways: as an expression
of the delinquent's wish, or character or need, as a consequence
of his parents' acts or unconscious motivations or those of
their parents, as a result of differential association or communication,
as a function of the slum or the economic system or advertising
or the police system or the rating and dating scheme, as a result
of want of care in the folks stolen from or beat up upon --
the victim makes the crime! -- or the presence of alleys or
want of light at the site, as an artifact of unreasonable laws
... and so, literally, ad infinitum. The putting of all these
true propositions together in one book -- as in most texts on
the subject -- does not alter the status of the whole over that
of the parts, for the ratio of one to infinity is the same as
the ratio of ten to infinity. It should be obvious too that
what is selected for exposition out of this interminable tangle
is neither free of personal motive or political consequence:
indeed it arises almost altogether out of the first and eventuates
almost altogether in the second. (The word "almost"
is meant to cover the barring of patently false propositions,
which is indeed one of the virtues of social science over less
scrupulous propaganda)...