76
PARTISAN REVIEW
an empirical social science were inadequately analyzed. One of the
basic principles of the
International Encyclopedia of United Science
is, as the name indicates, the doctrine of the unity of science, which
would preclude such radical differences between two branches of
empirical inquiry. In view of this principle we raise the question as to
the way in which social sciences
include
value judgments. They may
do so in two ways: 1) Selective interests determined by value judg–
ments may influence the choice of subject matter or problems with
which social science is concerned. 2) Value judgments may be part
of the chain of propositions by which empirical assertions in social
science are confirmed.
In the first case such selective interests are not peculiar to the
social sciences. All sciences, indeed all human enterprises, are guided
by such valuations more or less consciously entertained. In the second
case value judgments employed in an empirical social science would
have to be operationally testable, while the term "value" would have
to be introduced into the science either as an observation term or as a
term which is reducible to observation terms. Value judgments which
satisfy these requirements are, with respect to their operational func–
tion in science, exactly like any other empirical statement: objective
and publicly confirmable.
Important practical issues are involved · in the methodology of
the social sciences. The application to the problems of social life of
the methods of inquiry which have been so successfully used in the
natural sciences depend to a great extent on our analysis of such
concepts as
value, interest,
and conscious
purpose.
Are these vital
factors in human activity empirically determinable by their opera–
tional consequences, or are they intelligible only through some direct,
intuitive apprehension? Upon the answers to such questions depends
the manner in which social problems are approached. In these
dif.
ferences of method, rather than in the metaphysical doctrines, lie the
basic issues between materialistic and idealistic interpretations of
history and society.
In one important respect Hegelian idealism and Marxist materi–
alism have a common approach to the question here raised. Both
philosophies in their stress on the temporal, historical character of
"reality" preclude immediate intuitive meanings. Meanings are not
inherent in the static "nature" or "being" of things. They are revealed
in their "becoming'' and de-Velopments. Or, as one might say, the
intelligible nature and essence of all things
are
their interactive rela·
tions and historical processes. This
metaphysi~al
doctrine finds its
logical counterpart in the operational theory
df
meaning to which
logical empiricism has given a formalized, systematic expression.
The
