Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/701

 SOCIOLOGICAL STAGE IN SOCIAL SCIENCES 687

universal myth, which captures all of us at certain times and places, is that there is something about which we know every- thing. This is the darling myth of the specialist, whether in theory or in practice. The only blasphemy which the specialist is sure to resent is intimation that the thing which he thinks he knows is merely a nodule of minor relations until it is connected up with the whole cosmos of major relations. We make a myth of our specialty by the fiction that it is known when it is formu- lated by itself. We make a m)^h of all other experience by assuming that further formulation of it could have only a neg- ligible value for our specialty. The foremost function of the social sciences is to forge ahead in resolving the mythical in the human lot into the actual by making out the working connections between all the phases of experience.

My fifth commonplace is that stupid wastefulness prevails in the place of economy of the resources of social scientists for progressing with their function of social interpretation. If one of our g^eat industrial organizers were to take charge of social investigation in the United States, for example ; if such a view of the function of the social sciences as I have indicated were clearly before his mind — if he obtained a thorough report of what is actually going on in the way of performing this function; his first reaction would be amazement that such a situation could have existed so long without breakdown or exposure. He would conclude without hesitation that its confusion, its purposelessness, its unorganization, its squandering energies needed for co- operation upon unsystematically selected details, would bankrupt any business whose resources were not unlimited.

He would be right. I can find no better analogy for the actual situation in our social sciences than the alleged condition which Secretary Meyer has undertaken to reform in our navy. As I have no authentic information about the facts, the illustra- tion must be strictly hypothetical. A navy is presumably an effective combination of managerial and mechanical forces for sea fighting. Assuming the truth of all the accusations, we have no navy. We have some ships, we have some men aboard, we have an indefinite number of more or less independent adminis-