Methods of social study / by Sidney and Beatrice Webb.

  • Sidney Webb
Date:
1932
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Methods of social study / by Sidney and Beatrice Webb. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    tion of the structure and function of the social in¬ stitution itself, and then tracing in it the effects of all factors whatsoever, mental, physical, and social, to which ever sister science these factors may pre¬ dominatingly belong.1 We have dealt at some length with the position that social science or sociology holds in the classifica¬ tion of the sciences, partly because it is useful to the social investigator to remove any ambiguity or 1 There may be some among our readers conscious of a vague feeling that we have not explicitly dealt with a rival view of the scope and method, not of sociology in particular but of our whole conception of the universe. As we understand it, the claim has been made by Hegel, on the one hand, and by the Marxist philosophers of to-day on the other, that it is not by a purely objective analysis of the phenomena of the external world, even with all possible aid from ratiocination, experiment, and statistics, that any valid science can be constructed, whether of the human mind (psychology) or of social groupings (sociology). Any valid science, they seem to say, must be based on “the idea” immanent in the universe, of which the phenomena are only manifestations which cannot be accurately apprehended and are not fully comprehensible except when regarded as emanating from “the idea” underlying and conditioning the whole evolutionary process. We can only say, by way of excuse, that we deliberately include, as within the purview of the sociologist, everything that can be shown to influence in any way the coming into existence, the activity or the modification of any human grouping. Unfortunately, we do not ourselves know of the existence of any such dynamic “idea” or “law of the being” determining logically what any society must become, as we understand to be postulated by the Hegelians. What seems to us a similar claim is made by the Marxist philosophers of to-day on behalf of “the Materialist Conception of History”, and the “dialectic method”. This appears to us to involve the assertion that there is some transcendental idea, or type, or curve, or pattern, to which the future evolution of the universe, or of human society, must necessarily conform. If there is any such influence at work, it is naturally a fit subject for objective study, along with the phenomena themselves. But we must leave that study to those who have become aware of the existence of the suggested dominating influence. To us, the “Materialist Conception of History” is merely one hypothesis among many; one which appears to describe some of the phenomena of social evolution—notably some features and results of the industrial revolution of the past two cen¬ turies—but not others; and which, like all hypotheses, may be useful as an instrument of investigation but acquires scientific value only in so