A Baedeker of Social Analysis

...It is emphatically not filled with technicalized elaborations of the commonplace...

...what it deals with is important, and the importance is not obscured, as it so frequently is, by the deadpan pose of "objectivity...

...In all, only 19 pages are devoted to labor unionism, which seems shockingly inadequate...

...Reviewed by Will Herberg Professor of Social Philosophy, Drew University This book is about as impossible to review as the Encyclopedia Britan-nica...

...and they answer, virtually without qualification, in the affirmative...

...It is therefore in a sense a textbook, but it suffers from none of the aridities usually associated with textbooks in the social sciences...

...it is therefore seen as a kind of spiritual cement of society, undergirding its values and sustaining its institutions, and not (as is normative in Jewish-Christian tradition) in its transcendent aspect, calling into question all established values and bringing to bear the judgment of God upon all established institutions, insofar as they are involved in the relativities and ambiguities of history...

...The two are not synonymous, as they are made to be in the opening paragraph of the chapter, "The Scientific Study of Society.'' The "scientific study of society" yes—and that without limits set in advance...

...it is rather something like a carefully constructed diagram or map, with certain parts filled in in considerable detail and others left bare in general outline...

...The general reader who wants a view of "the fabric of society as it is woven, rent, and rewoven in ever new patterns" can do no better than to read this book, undeterred by its bulk and scope...

...It is thus neither a specialized study of a limited field nor an overall survey of the whole territory...

...The achievement is an impressive one...

...but they are not neutral or "value-free...

...My real quarrel, and here it is probably with both authors alike, goes deeper...

...ethics and religion...

...Most surprisingly of all, considering that it is a textbook in the social sciences, it is written in English—in clear, attractive English that is not afraid of style and distinction...

...This completely misses the point, it seems to me...

...Nor are there any works about society without value judgments...

...For this reason alone, "social science" can never constitute a genuine scientific system...

...logic, language and thought...

...as he observes, he is "engaged," for it is himself in his deepest concerns that he is observing: Tua res agitur...

...A work about society would otherwise be valueless...

...It is with their conception of social science...

...international affairs, diplomacy, war and peace...

...Contrary to the authors' precedure in the rest of the book, religion is dealt with primarily in terms of primitive cult and myth...

...He stands outside yet inside, in a most anomalous fashion...

...Unevenness in a work of this scope was hardly to be avoided, and may easily be allowed for...

...the authors ask...

...It is markedly uneven, as indeed was inevitable...

...Yet despite the high level of information, insight and discernment that is maintained throughout, the book is at various points open to serious criticism...

...Crane Brinton's distinction between the "cumulative" knowledge of science and the "non-cumulative," or only partly "cumulative," knowledge characteristic of history (where scientific method may indeed be used, but where a non-scientific "existential" element enters constitutively) could well be extended to all the "human" disciplines, as indeed is implied in Brinton's argument...

...Some sections, such as the discussion of democracy and totalitarianism, the chapters on stratification, mobility and status, the dissertation on popular culture, the chapter on "economic progress and normative disintegration," and the analysis of our "homogenized culture," are quite first-rate...

...The authors, it seems to me, confuse the idea of a "science of society," in the sense in which we speak of a "science of nature," with the "scientific study of human behavior...

...Can there be a science of society as there is a science of nature...

...As one passes from chapter to chapter, one's admiration for the range of knowledge possessed by the two authors mounts...

...Here lies, indeed, the chief merit of the work: It leads the reader to assume a critical posture even to what the authors place before him as their considered convictions and tested conclusions...

...The book is intended to present the "fabric of society" in a way that will give the reader both an insight into and the feel of the ongoing process of social life...

...The point, as I understand it, is precisely the fact that the astronomer, no matter how much control over the planets he may acquire, is never part of the astronomical system he is describing, while the sociologist is part of the social system, and, do what he may, he cannot detach himself from it...

...A word is said on prophetism in an appendix, but only in relation to priest and cult, and even here there is serious confusion between prophetic spirituality and mysticism...

...The book was apparently conceived in connection with a course entitled "The Fabric of Society" that Professors Ross and van den Haag offered during the winter of 1957-58 at New York University...

...for all its genuine appreciation of the value of religion and its defense of religion against fallacies of scientism, it really does not get to the heart of the matter, even to the degree that this is possible in a sociological context...

...Thus the basic difference between the natural sciences and the "social sciences," rooted in the fact that man's knowledge of the science in the former case does not and in the latter case does enter constitutively into the subject matter of the science, is brushed aside with the remark that there is really no such basic difference at all, since "the statement that physical events occur, whatever our behavior, is true only because of a lack of power over natural forces...

...art and its social functions...

...it is above all their skill in initiating the reader into the theory and practice of social analysis...

...The scope is vast: The work begins with some chapters on personality, "psychoanalytically oriented," and concludes with a chapter on civilization, built around two long passages from Santayana and Whitehead...

...We have made value judgments," they state quite frankly...

...the American social system and the Communist and Socialist "alternatives...

...The authors are objective, in the sense that they try to take account of the relevant facts and arguments as completely, fairly and impartially as they can...

...Objections of a very similar kind could be raised against the authors' treatment of science, determinism and freedom...

...The brief comments on science and religion on page 110 (van den Haag), in which religion is (quite rightly) represented as "concerned with the ends for which science can only offer means, and with a future and past which are not testable but accepted ultimately on the basis of faith and reason," are rather different in their tenor from what is said on the same subject in the latter chapters on "Science, Morals and Values" and "Religion" (Ross...

...This list could obviously be prolonged...

...economics, labor and the "farm problem...

...The chapter on religion is even more unsatisfactory...

...the difficulties at present in the way of a "science of society" can, in principle at any rate, be overcome...

...In fact, it would be hard to think of an aspect of contemporary American social life that is not touched upon in one way or another in these pages...

...Understandable, too, is a certain inconsistency to be noted here and there, due probably to the somewhat different viewpoints of the two authors, who, although remarkably united in their collaboration, apparently do not see eye to eye on everything...

...moral judgment, approval and disapproval are reduced to an ideologized kind of animal training...

...These critical comments, which mark some of my differences with the philosophical frame of reference employed by Ross and van den Haag in the development of their argument at various points in the book, are important, and tend in my opinion to weaken the work...

...Both combine to make this one of the most significant works of its kind that has appeared in recent years...

...Others, such as the chapter on bureaucracy, or the one on labor and its social and economic aspects, are disappointing...

...nothing "social" seems outside their competence...

...indeed, when the dual authorship is kept in mind, they may even contribute something of the appearance of dialogue to break a uniformity that could easily become too unremitting...

...And it is not only, or even primarily, the information they provide that compels attention...

...The thoroughgoing determinism they espouse reduces human freedom merely to an awareness of necessity, and even that becomes epiphenomenal or disruptive of the determinist system...

...In between is about everything that one may imagine—groups, group structure and group functioning...

...If our work has helped him to reason it soundly," they declare, "we have been successful...

...The familiar objections to this position, they feel, can all be met...

...no less impressive are the problems and difficulties which the book is bound to raise in the mind of the attentive reader...

...The former consists of hardly more than a paper by Reinhard Bendix, in itself a classic, reprinted with practically no comment or elaboration...

...But since the authors hide nothing, and are indeed very scrupulous in presenting their positions to scrutiny and criticism, the reader will gain from a careful study of even these controverted sections...

...Such discrepancies are not always to be deplored...

...They take up the objections one by one—they list seven in all—and, to their satisfaction at least, dispose of them...

...Well, in this, as in so many other ways, they have been successful...

...Of course, a "completely undetermined world" would be impossible, but the alternative is not a completely determined world...

...The real difference is between works that make readers aware of the value judgments that necessarily enter at some points and those in which value premises remain hidden to reader or author or both.' For this statement alone the authors deserve a rousing vote of thanks...

...Ross and van den Haag do not avail themselves of this distinction, and so I think their notion of "social science" remains inadequate, if not misleading...

...the latter is disjointed and perfunctory, containing no serious account of the role and function of labor unionism in a democracy, and—what is really amazing—no treatment worthy of the name of the problems of internal regime or of the labor union as a power system...

...democracy, politics, bureaucracy and totalitarianism...

...But no "science of society," comparable to a "science of nature," emerges therefrom...

...But we have still not exhausted the merits of this extraordinary work...

...The trouble is that the difficulties they really dispose of are not very important, while the really important difficulties are hardly disposed of...

...In fact, it is a kind of small encyclopedia of the Geisteswis-senschajten, written by two men instead of a large staff of contributors...

...Intrigued by the argument," the authors are ready to concede, "the reader may reach his own, perhaps contrary, conclusion...

...The complex dialectic of freedom and determinism, in which freedom is quite as real prospectively as determinism is assumed to be retrospectively, would seem to do much fuller justice to the multidimensionality of human existence than either the simple scheme of total determinism, championed by the authors, or the simple scheme of total indeterminism, which they erect as a straw man...