ABSTRACT
THE social sciences all more or less explicitly use the notion of purpose. Some, as, for example, Economics and Law, are based on certain assumptions as to the nature of human motives and are directly concerned with consciously purposive behaviour. Others, for example, Anthropology and Ethnology, frequently employ teleological modes of explanation in a manner more familiar in the biological sciences. Thus customs and institutions generally are discussed from the point of view of their survival value (or other social function) to the groups or peoples among whom they spring up. Groups are said to persist as wholes, to exhibit plasticity and adaptability and other features of the organic world. In the wider sciences of Sociology and Politics we speak of a social purpose and a social good, and the analogy between social wholes and individual persons or organisms is frequently debated. I propose here to inquire how far and in what sense social wholes are purposive, and into the relation between the purposive and the organic, as these terms are used when they are applied to societies.
