New Sources in the Social Sciences

The social sciences are the most difficult of all the sciences to supply with sufficient reference sources and especially with adequate bibliographic tools. This difficulty, of course, stems from the intrinsic difference between the subject matter and literature of the social sciences and that of the natural sciences. In the latter the elements of measurement and experimentation are comparatively stable and controllable. But the material of the social sciences is man; man and his behavior in society; man who changes and reacts to change. The behavior of man cannot be produced at will under laboratory conditions. It can only be observed and recorded as it happens, and it is this written record with which the social scientist must deal. So enormous and diverse is the record that the social scientist studies only a segment of it, that which reveals man's economic behavior or his political behavior, for instance.published or submitted for publicatio