ABSTRACT
Titles as well as books have a significance that it behooves the critic to trace and interpret. What specific connotations the authors of The Lonely Crowd had in mind in electing for the title of their book a poetic image I do not know. But it is a rare social scientist indeed who has the courage to choose that conspicuous symbol of his contributions, a book title, from the humanities and, as if that were not daring enough, from poetry itself. In so doing, the authors of The Lonely Crowd have identified themselves with that small minority that cannot understand how social science, as a science of man, can be anything else but a profoundly humanistic endeavor.
