ABSTRACT
The chapter argues that social scientists search for causes principally by calculating and interpreting co-relationships. They try to measure what-goes-with-what as a potential sign of what-causes-what. Tallies of association constitute the most popular tool used by would-be scientists of the social. In adopting the instruments of correlation with this tool, one immediately confronts the statisticians' suggestion cited. The chapter discusses some hurdles that slow the advance of knowledge of social activities. Social statistics sometimes tally individual persons and their actions as units, but it is their nature also to move beyond individuals and to enumerate collections of individuals as constituting unitary categories. Social categories are social facts; they are multiply conceived. One difficulty in the measurement of social facts concerns the justification of aggregation, and it becomes more acute as one moves conceptually "up" the abstraction ladder and puts "cognitive distance" between what is phrased as concept and what can be reliably observed as its exemplars.
