HUMAN BEHAVIOUR BEYOND EXPERIMENT

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 12, 29 January 1937, Page 4

HUMAN BEHAVIOUR BEYOND EXPERIMENT

"We should not dclude ourselves into thinking we can apply methods -of science to social questions with the same certaiuty oi useful reaults already obtained in the physical science," said Dr. Irving Langmuir of General Electric reeently. He was discussing the present tendency of political observers to toss social questions in the direction of natural science for solution, and he told the Engineering Societies of New England in substance that such things could not be dealt with by experimental methods. "The ability to choose desirable experimental conditions and to repeat tho experiment 'as often as desired is wholly absent. We could not, if we wanted to, repeat our last depression, just to find out "\.hich one of the remedies that were tried was most effective, or to' apply a differeut set to discover their value. The most we can hope for iu social problems is to establish a certain probability that some policies are better than others. "An approach to scientific certainly is almost eliminated because social problems cannot be duplicated, and the enormous number of factors entering into them are never properly unraveled and weighed Compared with the exact statement of the physical law of conservation of energy, the so-called law of 'supply and demand' is very vague. "This does not mean, however, that we should give up the attempt to think cleaxly on social questions, because experience gained from the use of the seientifie method should bo extremely useful in developing sound thinking habits to help answer them."