ARNOLD BRECHT'S POLITICAL THEORY REVISITED Political ...

ARNOLD BRECHT ' S POLITICAL THEORY REVISITED 163
the observer and what is in it when he reports; it is contingent also
on the mind of the report's receiver. Words may have a different
meaning for the writer and the reader, the speaker and the hearer"
(39). And some speakers, as in surveys or scientific interviews, may
possess a "conscious or subconscious intent to deceive, to modify or
to exaggerate." Refined techniques have been devised to avoid the
most obvious pitfalls, but these produce, at best, a limited degree of
success in avoiding the possible errors. The use of preformulated
questions and answers, indirect questions, depth interviews, etc., all
have their own particular sets of associated methodological problems.
2
In his account of the third "scientific step," measurement, Brecht
acknowledges that at least some "qualitative values" "resist attempts
to measure them in quantitative terms." And this resistance bears
heavily upon "the possibilities of measurement in the social
sciences," which are, "and will continue to remain, limited because
of the great number of variables, all of which cannot be included in
scientific analysis and, insofar as they can, are not all measurable"
(43). But Brecht implies an even more serious limitation or defect of
the results of the employment of statistical techniques in the social
sciences when he comments, in the preceding section, that the
results of depth interviewing "are not fit for statistical calculations
unless they are first coded and thereby once more bereaved of all or
some of their `depth"' (41). The loss or absence of depth in so many
of the studies which have been produced by practitioners of the new
"science" has, of course, been frequently remarked upon by critics,
almost always to a cool reception.
Brecht's account of the fourth "scientific step," acceptance as
`fact," provides a continuation of the emphasis on insuperable
uncertainties. "Even when an observation is accepted as exactly
made and adequately communicated, it remains to be decided by
science whether the conclusion can be drawn that the phenomenon
which was subjectively observed corresponded objectively to an actual
fact" (48). And that decision on "acceptance" is a matter of individual
judgment for each "scientist." There are "no strict rules" to
guide that judgment, other than a few negative ones which forbid
21, Brecht gives only the briefest mention of some of these, but his constant stress is
on the problematical character of the results achieved even with the greatest possible
methodological care.