Abstract

Studying human beings as physicists have studied the world for so many years has been the aim of a substantial number of social scientists at least since the time of Comte. Basing their claim upon a certain metaphysics and anthropology, such thinkers have insisted over and over again that such a program is at least theoretically possible. But can a program, which cannot be put into practice on even a very rudimentary level, really be theoretically possible in the first place? Physicists have known that space travel was theoretically possible ever since the seventeenth century and have made steady progress towards its implementation up until its recent fulfillment. Instead of making progress, however, the social scientists are still talking about what they are going to do some day when they acquire the tools for doing it. Even this would not be so bad, provided they knew exactly what kind of tools they needed and how to manufacture them. Today, though, even this pre-preliminary stage has not been brought to a successful conclusion. Some thinkers among the ranks of social scientists, however, are beginning to see their way clear to a better understanding of their collective predicament. H M Blalock Jr., professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina, appears to be one of these thinkers