Introduction to the Social Sciences

The January 2 lecture that Samuelson considered to mark his second birth was the first of four lectures on “The Industrial Revolution and Social Change” in the introductory social science course.

The industrial revolution ushered in what was called “Modern Industrial Society.” Here there was a return to Malthus and population growth, though with the addition of “eugenics and differential fertility.” The syllabus does not make it clear what position was taken on eugenics, widely accepted dur­ing this period and not yet tainted by association with Nazi doctrines. The course covered two features of modern society, urbanization and the profes­sionalization of life, as well as social institutions—the family, the education system, and religion; the quarter ended with lectures on “The New Social Control” and “Social Research and Social Planning,” following on from dis­cussions, in the immediately preceding lectures, of race, social unrest, and problems of social adjustment. Cultural heterogeneity made social control difficult, but it was implemented at different levels and through different mechanisms: custom, the law, education, propaganda, prestige, public opin­ion, and “the crowd.” The final lecture then tackled the problem of how the social sciences could be brought to bear on policy, discussing the nature of science, as technical and instrumental, in relation to the problems of predic­tion in social life. This was a prelude to the coverage of politics in the third quarter.

The methodological message underlying the course was that society, whether in its economic, social, or political aspects, needed to be under­stood in terms of evolving habits and customs. This was reinforced by the books that students were required to read alongside the “indispensable” readings reproduced along with the syllabus: Middletown, by Robert and Helen Lynd (1929); The Mind of Primitive Man, by Franz Boas (1911); and Folkways, by William Graham Sumner (1906). However, beneath all of this was industrialization, explaining both the frequency with which the Hammonds were cited and why the first quarter had mostly been devoted to economic history. Samuelson had missed this, but given his belief that he needed to work hard to catch up with the other students, his need to pass an examination, the frequency of references to the industrial revolu­tion in the lectures he was hearing, and that the material was printed in his course syllabus, he must have studied recommended reading on the nature of social problems and on comparing the natural and social sci­ences.

I am not—far from it—arguing against what is called the quantita­tive method in the social sciences. The further it can go the better, the surer, our knowledge will become. I am arguing against the naive assumptions which accompany a too inclusive confidence in the use of statistics.... What we are really seeking to understand are systems of relationship, not series of quantities. With the quantitative method must go hand in hand the method of logical analysis and synthesis.¹³

This view, endorsed by one of the teachers to whom he was closest at Harvard, was consistent with the stance he eventually took toward quan­titative work in economics. He was also assigned readings from a textbook on English economic history by Abbott Usher, whose course he was to take at Harvard a few years later. These chapters, along with readings from the Hammonds, R. H. Tawney, Adam Smith, and Karl Marx, covered both the social and the economic implications of the industrial revolution. He was getting the message that the economic and the social could not be separated.

Over seventy years later, Samuelson acknowledged the importance of one of the books prescribed for this course—Sumner's Folkways. Sumner's book prepared him for the distinction between propositions pertaining to science and ones that relied on values on which individuals might legitimately differ. Referring to the argument made by Lionel Robbins concerning scientific and nonscientific propositions, he observed:

Yes. But, you see, most economists resisted Robbins, because they thought there was nothing left by way of policy prescription, although Robbins never quite said that.

The separation of facts from values was certainly taught in this the course, but it did not come only from Sumner's book. The idea that something was right in one culture but wrong in another pervaded the syllabus. The Mind of Primitive Man and Middletown would have clearly shown how mod­ern American society differed from the “primitive” ones analyzed by Boas. Sumner provided a criterion, closely related to the pragmatism taught in the humanities course, by which to judge mores and customs: “Bad mores are those which are not well fitted to the conditions and needs of the society at the time.”¹⁵

It is interesting that Samuelson considered Sumner to have been a “very conservative economist” but a “great sociologist,” for Sumner's sociology pro­vided the basis for his conservatism. Sumner's main thesis was that social mores changed slowly and that societies were not organized on rational prin­ciples. Mores that were “understood, regular, and undisputed” made for social stability, and even inhabitants of slave societies could live together in peace and harmony if they adhered to traditional and customary ways.¹⁶ Social chaos, such as occurred in the French Revolution, could result from attempts to replace traditional customs with ones based on a rational ideal imposed on society by the ruling authorities.¹⁷ Perhaps, in remembering Sumner as a great sociologist, Samuelson was expressing some sympathy for the idea that social customs should change only slowly.

The argument that scientific and ethical judgments needed to be kept separate was discussed explicitly in the course, in which the writings of John Dewey featured strongly. Samuelson will have read the article, reprinted in the syllabus, in which Joseph Spengler challenged the claims that a “real scientist” was concerned only with quantification and prediction, and that “No scientist dares, as a scientist, to express a judgment as to what is good and bad.”¹⁸ This would have been reinforced by the textbook he was using on his parallel course in economics, which expressed the view that “it is not the peculiar function of economics, or of any other science, to determine what is good and what is bad.”¹⁹ Though economists generally associate such ideas with Lionel Robbins, Samuelson will have heard this through Spengler, who cited not Robbins (whose essay had yet to appear when Samuelson began the course) but the sociologist Pitirim Sorokin and the nineteenth-century American economist Francis Walker. Spengler also expressed the view that “social science differs categorically from physical science.... No amount of pretended exactitude or assumed impersonalism can transform social science into physical science. The social scientist, therefore, is condemned to be an artist who must rely on common sense instead of upon an esoteric methodol­ogy, who must be governed not only by the standards of the laboratory but even more by those of common sense and common decency. He cannot even act as if he were a physical scientist.”²⁰ This was a view that Samuelson, who thought a lot about science, would later reject.