ABSTRACT
Let me refer once more to the empirical and contingent nature of the regularities or laws discoverable in social phenomena, Being without necessity, these regularities are also without immediate persuasiveness; they are not as such meaningful and self-explanatory, but still indicate a just-so state of affairs. They acquire meaning and explanatory weight only when they yield, that is, when we read into them, that additional datum which I have called their fitness or requiredness. I have enumerated three categories of this ‘fitness’—logical consistency; mechanical causality; and purpose. And it now remains to be shown that only these, and no others, satisfy our desire to understand.
