PUBLIC OPINION by WALTER LIPPMANN TO FAYE LIPPMANN ...

exhibit. He has so few, because unless he deals with the historic
past, he cannot prove his theories before offering them to the public.
The physical scientist can make an hypothesis, test it, revise the
hypothesis hundreds of times, and, if after all that, he is wrong, no
one else has to pay the price. But the social scientist cannot begin
to offer the assurance of a laboratory test, and if his advice is
followed, and he is wrong, the consequences may be incalculable. He is
in the nature of things far more responsible, and far less certain.
But more than that. In the laboratory sciences the student has
conquered the dilemma of thought and action. He brings a sample of the
action to a quiet place, where it can be repeated at will, and
examined at leisure. But the social scientist is constantly being
impaled on a dilemma. If he stays in his library, where he has the
leisure to think, he has to rely upon the exceedingly casual and
meager printed record that comes to him through official reports,
newspapers, and interviews. If he goes out into "the world" where
things are happening, he has to serve a long, often wasteful,
apprenticeship, before he is admitted to the sanctum where they are
being decided. What he cannot do is to dip into action and out again
whenever it suits him. There are no privileged listeners. The man of
affairs, observing that the social scientist knows only from the
outside what he knows, in part at least, from the inside, recognizing
that the social scientist's hypothesis is not in the nature of things
susceptible of laboratory proof, and that verification is possible
only in the "real" world, has developed a rather low opinion of social
scientists who do not share his views of public policy.
In his heart of hearts the social scientist shares this estimate of
himself. He has little inner certainty about his own work. He only
half believes in it, and being sure of nothing, he can find no
compelling reason for insisting on his own freedom of thought. What
can he actually claim for it, in the light of his own conscience?
[Footnote: Cf. Charles E. Merriam, _The Present State of the Study
of Politics_, _American Political Science Review_, Vol. XV.
No. 2, May, 1921.] His data are uncertain, his means of verification
lacking. The very best qualities in him are a source of frustration.
For if he is really critical and saturated in the scientific spirit,
he cannot be doctrinaire, and go to Armageddon against the trustees
and the students and the Civic Federation and the conservative press
for a theory of which he is not sure. If you are going to Armageddon,
you have to battle for the Lord, but the political scientist is always
a little doubtful whether the Lord called him.
Consequently if so much of social science is apologetic rather than
constructive, the explanation lies in the opportunities of social
science, not in "capitalism." The physical scientists achieved their
freedom from clericalism by working out a method that produced