Princeton University - Bric A Brac Yearbook (Princeton, NJ)

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Professor R. A. Lester, Chairman, Depart- ment of Economics and Social Institutions Professor W. Ebenstein, Department of Politics Professors M. Levy, G. Patterson, Deliartment of Economics and Social Institutions great novelist may provide those brilliant intuitive insights into human -behavior which cannot be -obtained by more prosaic scientific measurements. In reverse, from a study of -social science comes awareness that poets, painters, sculptors, and musicians through their own media express concern with the great issues that challenge the student of society. Classic works in all fields of artistic and literary achievement are commonly expressions of concern for perennial dilemmas of living men. The sculptor seeking to express the anguish and striving of The Political Prisoner is not isolated in intent from the scholar tracing the historic origins of the Fifth Amendments protection of the individual against selffincrimination. It is perhaps the unique responsibility of the social scientist to make explicit the contemporary challenge to traditional democratic, humanist values. Today all our institutions, traditions and aspirations are threatened, both by a rival political and ideological system, and by -the imperatives of technological development. The social sciences can equip students to deal with these real issues and real problems. They may provide understanding that the flexibility and freedoms extant in our society today reflect ideas and institutions evolved under totally diiferent physical and psychological circumstances existing a century ago. We are today shaping the kind of society this will be fifty or a hundred years hence. It is a legitimate and proper concern for the social scientist to point out dis' Professors F. W. Notestein, W. E. Moore, G. W. Breese, Department of Economics and Social Institutions

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SOCIAL SCIENCES By H. Hubert Wilsoia, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Politics One of the virtues of Princeton education is the relative absence of artificial barriers between departments and disciplines. The result is that students discover early in their work here that there is no true dichotomy between the humanities and social science. Both are Concerned with man, his achievements, -his limitations, and his potential. In economics, sociology, and politics the effort is made to convey a sense of the wholeness of the Culture and the contribution to understanding that is made by various emphases and approaches. Thus the student of society finds a background of history, philosophy and literature indispensable to the analysis of phenomena which for convenience have been classified as political, or economic, or sociological He discovers that the Professor H. H. Wilson, Department of Politics Professors C. G. Sellers, Jr., G. B. Turner, R. D. Professors J. B. Whitton, A. T. Mason,W S Carpenter, Challener, Department of History Professors R. C. Snyder, R. W. Van Wagenen, Department of Politics Department of Politics

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Professor E. H. Harbison, Professor D. G. Munro, Director, Woodrow Wilson School Department of History Professors W. J. Baumol, F. F. Stephan, A. W. Sametz, Department of Economics and Social Institutions pari-ties between our professed aspirations and the impact of contemporary behavior. To this extent, at least, the social scientist may double as social reformer. He may well ask, Knowledge for what? This does not imply the substitution -of exhortation for scientific methods in the study of society. Nor does it in any sense constitute a retrogression. In fact the great advances in social science from Plato and Aristotle, Freud and Marx, to the present have stemmed primarily from concern with social reform. Therefore, as Gunnar Myrdal emphasizes, quite apart from drawing any policy conclusions from social research Professor A. Isely, Department of History Professor C. E. Black, Department of History Professor G. A. Graham, Chairman, Department of Politics