The Meaning of Social Science

t the whole system of interrelations given in the life of mankind. The second lecture expanded the proposition that we have been going through a period of specialization in social science, which resulted in an excessive degree of isolation between artificially segregated divisions of science. This separateness had certain advantages, and it has accomplished certain very necessary results. Its obvious disadvantage was that it erected imaginary but effective barriers between divisions of social labor which should intimately communicate. The results presented by the sciences at this stage v/ere like parts of a machine manufactured in different factories, according to the ideas of different designers, and consequently difficult to fit together when they come to be assembled. The third lecture showed that the sociological factor in social science can be understood only when we give full faith and credit to its central contention, namely: This deploying of skirmishers must be followed by a rallying in force upon some center of operations. Social science cannot be many. It must be one. The next stage of social science must be marked by a drawing together of the parallel or diverging lines of research into which it has been broken up. We must use the knowledge which we have already gained of parts or aspects or details of human experience to construct a more adequate general survey of the whole of human experience, in order that we may intelligently carry on the ...