THE NEW POLITICAL SCIENCE RE-EXAMINED: A Symposium / Vol. 29, No. 2 (Summer 1962)
- Social Research An Int'l Quarterly
- Jul 1, 1962
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 29, 2023
Ithiel de Sola Pool, Norton E. Long, Arvid Broderson, Arnold Brecht, Hans Neisser, and Howard B. White
The primary thesis of Mr. White's paper is an ethical one involving an accusation of moral turpitude. As is usually the case among scholars, the resort to ethical criteria turns out to be an evasion by the accuser of hard questions of fact. Mr. White's thesis is premised by the assertion that various developments in the technologies of public-opinion research, polling, public relations, and the mass media are all tending to reduce the capability of a voter to exercise a rational judgement. He then proceeds to deplore those value-free social scientists who betray their heritage by putting themselves at the service of these developments rather than criticizing them.
Generalizations about linguistic analysis and ethics are not likely to be very useful; nor, as a general rule, are general descriptions of linguistic methods in philosophy enlightening. Unless one has actually seen some live philosophical tangle unsnarled by such a technique, one will not be very convinced by even a very accurate general description of the methods used.
Three forces are popularly assumed to be largely responsible for the obvious resistance to population control. One is ignorance of birth-control techniques; a second is the cost of contraceptives, which, though moderate as medical costs go, is excessive for low-income families in underdeveloped countries. The third force is the opposition of organized religion, especially the Roman Catholic Church.
The revolutionary events in modern painting--they can be said to have begun with Impressionism's decisive subjectivity of seeing, or with the counter-movements to it around the turn of the century--have occurred in a time of rapid social transformation in old Europe. The dissolution of bourgeois society, set in motion and determined through the process of industrialization, sharpened through wars and revolutions, was reflected in the artistic expressions of the epoch.
The following is part of an essay in philosophical anthropology concerned with determining man's specific difference in the animal kingdom. For heuristic purposes I have assumed the situation of explorers on another planet who wish to ascertain the presence of 'men' among the living creatures there. The situation is heuristically ideal because it is ideally rigorous, denying all support of morphological familiarity and with it the temptation to take accidentals of bodily type for essentials of a species of life.
Comparison of the East German and West German economies has interested economists for some time, because there is scarcely a better possibility to contrast the performance of a planned economy with that of a market economy.
In raising a number of questions about the role of reparations and foreign trade in East Germany's economic development after 1945, Professor Wiles suggested the desirability of somehow fitting together specialized studies made independently by individual scholars, in order to gain an overall view of East Germany's economic performance.
An extended discussion of George C. Homans Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms.
Review of book by Donald Zagoria. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1962. 484 pp.
Review of book by Jerome Blum. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1961. 656 pp.
Review of book by Nicholar Vakar. New York: Harper. 1962. 204 pp.
Review of book by Charles Forcey. New York: Oxford University Press. 1961. 358 pp.
Review of book by Herbert Feis. Princeton: Princeton University press. 1961. 199 pp.
Review of book by Ernest Nagel. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World. 1961. 618 pp.
Review of book by Joseph Church. New York: Random House. 1961. 369 pp.
Review of book by Saul K Padover. Austin: University of Texas Press. 1961. 290 pp.