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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    sists in an attempt to prove yourself wrong. Intellectual honesty is discouraged by politics, religion, and even courtesy. It is the hardest and most essential of the habits which the scientist, whether professional or amateur, must form/’1 Until the would-be investigator has acquired this habit, he will never make discoveries. The successful investigator is he who is eager to have the conven¬ tional classification upset, and the orthodox cate¬ gories transcended. He has in mind the axiom fathered on Heraclitus, “If ye expect not the un¬ expected ye shall not find truth”. “The progress of science,” it has been well said, “always depends upon our questioning the plausible, the respectably accepted, and the seemingly self-evident.”2 Far from ignoring an entirely unexpected fact, or some phenomenon inconsistent with accustomed defini¬ tions, he hails it with joy. It is to him a positive pleasure that things should be other than he had supposed them to be; and it is this occasional delight which makes the stir and thrill of the in¬ vestigator’s art. The False Start of a Question to be Answered And this brings us to a danger point at the very outset of social study. The false start which pseudo¬ investigation usually takes is the plausible one of asking a question. We are all apt to begin by re- 1 Possible Worlds, by J. B. S. Haldane, 1927, p. 174. 2 Reason and Nature, by Morris Cohen, New York, 1931, p. 348.