Addiction and Opiates

Addiction and Opiates CHAPTER 1 METHOD AND PROBLEM
questionable, unreliable, and even false propositions have been based on the examination of very many instances.
"Pure' or "enumerative" induction refers to the type of analysis in which the dependability of one's inferences depends
solely on the number of instances examined. "Induction by analogy" or "analytic induction" refers to another mode in
which the validity of conclusions depends on something other than the sheer number of examined instances, such as
their variety, the extent of one's knowledge of each of them, and the circumstances presented by each. The crucial
experiment of the classical form may be taken as a prototype of the latter mode.
Such terms as "cause" and "causal process" have been used as a matter of convenience in this discussion and will be
used repeatedly in subsequent pages to refer to the special kind of relationships that are affirmed by universal theories.
The substance of the methodological position that has been briefly sketched here could have been described without
the use of these terms, just as there are many inquiries made within the deterministic framework which never make use
of them.
On the other side of the fence, some social science statisticians have recently made considerable use of the concept
"cause," giving it a very different meaning from that which it has traditionally had or that it has here. Others reject the
concept altogether and urge that the latest developments in sub-atomic physics have totally discredited it along with the
entire logic and philosophy of nonstatistical determinism. Since this drastic conclusion is currently under debate and is
rejected by many eminent natural scientists and logicians, it is premature for social scientists to accept it as given.
Considering the vast differences between the theoretical sophistication of modem physics and modern sociology, the
rejection of causality and determinism by the latter looks more like an attempt to dodge problems than to solve them.
It is possible that the lesson which the social scientist might learn from these statistical theories of modern physics is
the more modest one that strict causality and determinism are inappropriate concepts at that level of analysis in which
individual instances are lost sight of and are merged in the description of aggregates. Since individual human beings,
unlike electrons, are accessible to direct observation it is unnecessary to study them only in the aggregate.
1. E. H. Sutberland, The Professional Thief (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1937).
2. As quoted by Charles E. Terry and Mildred Pellens, The Opium Problem (New York: Committee on Drug
Addictions and the Bureau of Social Hygiene, 1928), p. 602.
3. George H. Mead, "Scientific Method and Individual Thinker," in John Dewey (Ed.), Creative Intelligence (New
York: Henry Holt, 1917); A. D. Ritchie, Scientific Method. An Inquiry into the Character and Validity of Natural Laws (New York: Harcourt,
Brace, 1.923), PP. 53-83.
4. Kurt Lewin, A Dynamic Theory of Personality (New York: McGraw-,?Tm, 1935), pp. i8-ig, 24.
5. R. B. Braithwaite, Scientific Explanation: A Study of the Function of Theory, Probability and Law in Science (New
York: Harper Torchbooks, ig6o), p. 9.
6. Florian Znaniecki, The Method of Sociology (New York: Rinehart, 1934), PP. 232-33.
file:///I|/drugtext/local/library/books/adopiates/chapter1.htm[24-8-2010 14:23:31]