BO OKS
THE STATISTICAL SOLDIER
THE AMERICAN SOLDIER: ADJUSTMENT DURING ARMY LIFE. By
Samuel
A.
Stouffer, Edward
A.
Suchman, Leland C. DeVinney, Shirley
A.
Star, Robin M. Williams, ir. Princeton University Press. $7.50.
THE AMERICAN SOLDIER : COMBAT AND ITS AFTERMATH. By Samuel
A. Stouffer, Arthur A. Lumsdoine, Muion Harper Lumsdaine, Robin
M. Williams, ir., M. Brewster Smith, Irving L. Jonis, Shirley A. Stu,
Leonord S. Cottrell, ir. Princeton University Press. $7.50.
Too many obvious frauds were at last committed in the name
of sociology. At the same time, the allied breeds of social psychology
and social anthropology began to promise new and exciting forms of
cross-fertilization. So the old and toothless beast was put out to pasture.
In its place has come its more carnivorous son, known in his more modest
mood under some such name as "social relations," or, more often, in a
tone of majestic simplicity, as "social science."
The historical eye perhaps finds little new in this transformation.
Sociology has whored after the natural sciences from the start; certain
persons have always been able to convince themselves that these passions
were requited; and the result has been to beguile the sociologists into
egotistic and self-evidently absurd theorizations. Such efforts bring the
whole study into mild disrepute and lead the younger practitioners to
try and flee the family disgrace by hanging out some new and deceptive
shingle. The champions of "social science" today have hardly advanced
beyond Lester Ward or Comte in the grandiosity of their promises.
But they have far surpassed such a lonely and self-respecting figure
as Ward in the persistence and success of their showmanship. Bursting
onto university campuses after the war, overflowing with portentous
if
vague hints of mighty wartime achievements (not, alas, to be disclosed
because of security), fanatical in their zeal and shameless in their claims,
they persuaded or panicked many university administrations into giving
their studies top priorities. Needless to say, they scored an even more
brilliant success with the foundations. Certain foundation directors
even decided that virtually all their funds for research in the social
