The Hawthorne Experiments

In the opinion of many observers the most serious malady from which the social sciences suffer at the present stage of their development, is their compartmentalism. At the theoretical level, most social scientists would agree that the subject-matter of all the specialized social disciplines is the same, namely human behaviour: in practice most specialists deal with some aspect or department or area of human behaviour, or human behaviour viewed from some “viewpoint.” This separation, however, into areas or aspects, convenient as it may be, or at least as it is asserted to be, for research purposes, is a somewhat arbitrary proceeding and it has resulted, among other things, in a breakdown of communication between the different social science compartments. Another result has been a less, not a greater, understanding of man. There is a strong case to be made, as Robert Lynd, for example, has made it, for the view that the social scientist is the worst example extant of the person who knows more and more about less and less. This is particularly sad when it is noted that less and less in such a context is the human animal, who is clearly a complicated and many faceted piece of work on any viewpoint or from any aspect.