488
SOCIOLOGY ITALIAN STYLE
SIRS:
I would like to comment on
George Lichtheim's article "The
Triumph of the Fact" (PR, Fall
1964). I found it very intelligent,
very witty and at the same time
very dangerous.
I t has become the great fashion
to look down on "facts," since a
generally accepted method has been
developed by the social sciences to
come to know them. This is of
course in those parts of the world
where the method of analyzing
social reality with the purpose of
improving the human lot has been
brilliantly mastered. . . .
On the other hand, if Mr. Licht–
heim were living and working, as
I do, in a culture where (far from
planting their feet "on the grave
of metaphysics") the few social
scientists in existence are trying
desperately to help guide social
policy on the basis of knowledge
and rational planning and not by
the still prevailing folkways and
myths, the latter sometimes "plant–
ed" and other times the result of
unbroken prescientific attitudes, he
might be infinitely more tolerant of
the "fact." Agreed that the concern
with questionnaire construction is
lowly in the intellectual pecking
order but then so is the concern
with the common cold....
The developing countries, if they
do develop, will owe a debt of
gratitude to those social scientists
who were interested in the facts
rather than absorbed in theoretical
systems, among them to David Ries–
man who, starting from the law,
possibly turned social scientist be–
cause he saw the
need
for fact
gathering.
ELLEN
B.
HILL
COR RES P0 N
0 EN
CE
MR.
LICHTHEIM
REPLms:
I was only concerned with the
situation in American sociology, so
far as I am able, as an outsider,
to
understand it. Doubtless there are
some backward countries not yet
equipped with the latest empirical
and statistical tools. I take it
that
the Italian situation, with which
Mrs. Hill is professionally con.
cerned, displays some special fea–
tures. Even so I do not quite see
how the factual approach by itself
can be of much use in dealing
with
social problems in a Catholic
milieu. I should have thought it
was a question of values. What does
one do when people tell one that
family planning is immoral? Recite
statistics, or try to change their at–
titudes?
In any case I do not see why my
harmless little squib about Professor
Riesman's researches should
be
thought "very dangerous." There is
surely not much danger of Ameri–
can sociology moving away from
its present approach. Such a move
would call empiricism into question
and raise all sorts of troublesome
possibilities, such as the fusion of
historical and sociological concepts.
or even an attempt to get beyond
the disjunction of "facts" and
"values." I see no evidence of a
move in this direction and must
decline to be held responsible for
whatever residual indifference to
"the facts" may still lurk in some
dark corners. Most sociologists of
my acquaintance are quite happy
with their approach, and wholly
disinclined to ask awkward ques–
tions about their own assumptions.
If
they ever do, it will be for
sound professional reasons. For my
part, I am content to wait.
