KNOWLEDGE FOR WHAT: SOCIAL SCIENCE AND THE DEBATE OVER ITS ROLE IN 1930'S AMERICA

The 1930's was a decade of change and debate within American social science. Although the social sciences had apparently arrived at a consensus regarding their proper role and approach in the 1920's, the social chaos created by the Depression caused many social scientists to reconsider their basic assumptions. Focusing first on the celebrations making the establishment of the Social Science Research Building in December of 1929 and its tenth anniversary in 1939, the dissertation argues that two approaches to the study of society existed within American social science. The first, which I have labeled the "objectivist" school, disdained theory and concentrated upon the development of sophisticated methodological techniques, especially quantitative ones. These thinkers argued that the proper role for social science was a science of technique concerned with the implementation of predetermined decisions. The second approach, which I have termed the "purposive" school, opposed the antitheoretical, quantitative, and technical orientation of the objectivists by arguing that technique must remain secondary to the overall purpose of social science. Relying upon the instrumentalist philosophy of John Dewey, the purposive school insisted that thinkers could not separate ends and means or engage in social research without considering desirable normative goals. These purposive thinkers used recent anthropological research as a means of suggesting possible social alternatives to the status quo and insisted upon the interrelatedness of all social aspects. They also employed value theory as a way of guiding future social change.; This dissertation examines the conflict by choosing four representative thinkers and analyzing their thought and careers. Economist Wesley Mitchell and political scientist Charles Merriam represent the objectivist school, while sociologist Robert Lynd and political scientist and neo-Freudian psychologist Harold Lasswell are the work's examples of the purposive school. Mitchell as a founder of the National Bureau of Economic Research and leading student of business cycles was the most important exponent of quantitative economics in the period between the two world wars. Merriam, the leading force behind the establishment of the Social Science Research Council, was the most influential proponent of a social science of technique. Lynd, author of the Middletown surveys, insisted throughout the 1930's, most eloquently in his 1938 lectures Knowledge for What?, that social science consider the ethical goals of their research. Lasswell, Merriam's most important student, used Freud and Marx to develop an approach to politics based upon reducing individual insecurity and thus preventing the outbreak of international conflict. The four men were in frequent contact, analyzed many of the same topics, and engaged in several debates.; The question of "knowledge for what" was the central concern of 1930's social science and even today continues to be one of the major debates within American social science. Thus, an examination of this conflict within 1930's American social science provides insight out only on the social thought of the period but on social science in general.