ABSTRACT
In a well-known text, mentioned in the foreword to the first French edition of this Dictionary, Bridgman notes that in physics progress results not only from the creation of new theories but at least as much from the criticism of existing theories. And Lazarsfeld recalls that the theory of relativity was born less perhaps from the anomaly which the experiments of Michelson-Morley indicated than from the carefully worked-out criticism of the idea of simultaneity by Einstein. At the time
when this idea was being given universal significance, Einstein observed that it had a different meaning according to whether one applied it to two events which both occur on earth or to two events of which one occurs on earth and the other on the moon. Lazarsfeld has forcibly emphasized that Bridgman’s distinction applies literally to the social sciences as much as it applies to the natural sciences. And he has many times laid stress on the fact that the very best method is par excellence that of explanation of the text.
