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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    investigator follows from the fact that he himself, with his personal, class, and racial interests, with his peculiar vices and virtues, with his beliefs and un¬ beliefs, forms an indissoluble part of human society, which is the very subject-matter of his science; a part which may any day be desirably or undesirably affected by the true or untrue conclusions arrived at by his and other peoples’ investigations. The authors have had the advantage of knowing, in the past half century, either personally or through their books, most of those who have, in Great Britain, devoted themselves to this youngest of the sciences. There has been no one of them in whom bias could not be detected. This is specially noticeable among those who have attained to any position in the public eye. Hence, when we are told that a particular person has been appointed on a Royal Commission or Gov¬ ernment Committee—or when the work of a particu¬ lar historian is recommended for use in the schools— on the ground that he is or claims to be an ‘ 'im¬ partial person”, we may rest assured that this means merely that the selector and the selected agree in their bias. They are often both so sodden with a par¬ ticular type of social prejudice that, like the man who is blind drunk, they are unaware of it!1 It is needless to point out that the bias need not take the the very conception of a spectator upon which all historical knowledge depends.” 1 How serious and all-pervading may be the bias of the social atmo¬ sphere will be seen in the careful study by Mr. J. A. Hobson in his Free Thought in the Social Sciences, 1926. This seems to be insufficiently appreciated by those who have discussed personal bias (compare Wie studirt man Sozialwissenschaft, by Josef Schumpeter, Munich, 1915, p. 20).