ABSTRACT
The application of scientific method in any field calls for standards of accuracy in observation, imagination in the framing of hypotheses, and care in checking these in turn against further observations—all at a level which is never easy to attain. The social sciences are, indeed, still very young; and in the early stages of any science it is inevitable that there should be a good deal of aimless floundering, and that people should sometimes take the wrong turnings. This would not, indeed, matter very much, were it not for the fact that many blind alleys are long ones, and that people do not always recognise this till they have gone a very long way off the right track. The two main causes of confusion and sterility in sociological studies appear, up till now, to have been on the one hand muddled biological analogies: and, on the other hand, the influence of the pseudo-scientific system associated with the name of Marx.
