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.

    52/284 (page 40)
    and that each group, imagining itself to be advan¬ cing medical science, had started out to investigate the question whether cold or heat was the best remedy for disease, medical men might then have gone on collecting facts—quite true facts—of ill¬ nesses cured and lives saved by the application of ice, on the one hand, and on the other by immersion in heated air, steam, or water, or by subjection to elec¬ trically-produced radiant heat. But we should have learnt nothing accurately about the human body, the laws of health, or the causes of disease. Probably, tired of collecting endless series of facts, each series proving its predetermined conclusion, we should have taken to persecuting each other as heretics or blasphemers against the true faith.” “If there is”, he added, “such a science as sociology, give up ask¬ ing questions in which you happen to be interested, or rather, reserve them until you have made your¬ self master of everything that can be discovered as to the structure and function of the social institu¬ tion that you profess to be investigating. When you have got so far, ten to one your original question will seem to you a silly one, and, in the form in which you stated it, probably not one to which an intelligent answer could be given.” To sum up, let the question to which you wish to find the answer do no more than suggest to you the particular social institution that you will study, and study that completely, irre¬ spective of whether the knowledge of fact that you are gaining seems to bear upon your original ques¬ tion or not. This, in our experience, is the best way,