ABSTRACT
Western civilization has such a long tradition of Christian absolutist ethics that until the modern era relativism was accepted with considerable reluctance. The most significant single factor influencing the growth of relativism has been the impact on the study of norms of scientific method. Relativism has created a special problem for the student of human behaviour. The social scientist is undoubtedly justified in being suspicious of the traditional normative categories: they are too vague and general, they overlap, and they are incomplete. Relativism is an unsuitable basis for a methodology because it denies the binding power of the purpose behind a methodology. The failure of scientism and behaviouralism are the failures of philosophy which — in the last analysis — are imposed by society.
