The science of social adjustment / by Sir Josiah Stamp.

  • Josiah Stamp, 1st Baron Stamp
Date:
1937
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The science of social adjustment / by Sir Josiah Stamp. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    regulated society, of a self-integrated industrial order ; theories of the economic cycle, of unemployment, of under-consumption, of redistribution of incomes, of population, of control of investment, and 2')articularly of social credit and reinforcements of purchasing power ; concern about the lag of man’s ethical and moral caj'tacity compared with either the bounty of providence, or of the laboratory ; the failure of science to integrate with society ; the shortcomings of eco¬ nomists, as scientists or as moralists ; ‘ production for use and not for profit ’, and a host of allied contentious questions all get their impetus from Plenty. It is not my purpose to touch any of these con- sequentials or derivatives, but rather to analyse 'plenty, mainly in its quantitative aspects, because according to the separate elements of its causation must depend diagnosis and the validity of all the reasoning which proceeds from the basic assumjition of plenty. This discipline is a preliminary to any such scientific study of impact and welfare as I have pleaded for in Chapter I., for the technique of measurement is the beginning of the science of social adjustment. Large dynamic ideas are scientifically dangerous if they remain unmeasured. Technological and scientific concejitions of plenty are capable of measurement and quantitative statement, but an accepted technique for this purpose is still lacking, and we have no recognized units of productivity capable of being fairly aggregated and conqjared. At this point I should be content with the idea of the measurement of plenty. But the prob- h*m goes much further : there is a sense in which factuality is not really actuality. An increase in boot¬ making machinery ot 10 ])er cent has a certain siguili-
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