Objectivity in the Social Sciences

Abstract

In the present paper I shall attempt to deal with objectivity in the social sciences, particularly in sociology, on which I shall concentrate, because I am frankly disturbed by a trend current on the American scene. The trend may be characterized by its causing bitter division amongst social scientists and upheaval in their gatherings. What disturbs me about this trend is not so much the upheaval, as the ready tendency to despair of the basic precondition for objective social science, namely the assumption of the unity of mankind — both intellectual and moral. The radicalist social scientists who belong to this trend claim that the long established goal of objectivity in social sciences is a chimera and a subterfuge which has served the powers that be for too long already.¹ In the name of instant peace and liberation they imply that rational discourse between social scientists of different persuasions — the Establishment and the Revolution — is no longer possible. Sociologists of the women’s liberation movement and black militant sociologists broadcast the idea that nothing can take the place of first-hand experience: only women can understand women’s problems² and only blacks can understand blacks.