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consequence to see with Comte in this logical order at the same time the historical order of the sciences. The latest and most complex group of knowledge is that which he called Sociology, which contains practically all the knowledge of history and civilization, all the mental and moral facts as far as they enter into a system of positive knowledge at all. But this whole social life presupposes the understanding of man as an organism. The science of sociology is thus dependent upon the science of biology. But the biologist, again, tries to bring back his facts to the laws of chemistry, which he presupposes, and so forth. The onedimensional system of Comte thus begins logically with a most general type, with mathematics, and goes from that to astronomy, from that to physics, then to chemistry, then to biology and finally to sociology. Spencer's system is essentially an elaboration of Comte's. He, too, begins with the most abstract science, mathematics; progress is then to the abstract concrete sciences which deal with the general forces of the universe, mechanics, physics and chemistry for which mathematics is the presupposition, and thence to the concrete sciences which refer to single objects; that is, to astronomy, geology and biology, while psychology and sociology become special parts of biology. The shortcomings of all these efforts are evident as soon as we consider that such positivistic systems crowd the totality of mental and moral sciences and all that refers to history and civilization under the conception of sociology. That means, of course, a strictly naturalistic aspect of the history of culture. All that the inner civilization of mankind has produced, politics and law, literature and art, knowledge and religion and philosophy, become then nothing but functions of the biological organism; and yet everyone who takes the standpoint of the historian or jurist, of the philosopher or theologian, feels the artificiality of such a naturalistic standpoint for these disciplines. The principle of grouping the sciences with reference to their logical relation is, however, in itself, of course, not responsible for this artificiality and for this unfairness to the historical and cultural disciplines. It was the materialistic metaphysics of those positivistic systems which brought about this overweight of natural science. On idealistic ground the reference to logical relations yielded accordingly a system of very different type. In Hegel's philosophical system, for instance, the sciences are brought, too, into logical relations with fullest justice to the demands of the moral sciences.

But while the Hegelian system has lost its influence in our day through its speculative character, our time is, in its deeper thought, strongly influenced by a newer movement which again brings order into the intellectual globe by insisting on logical differences which had been neglected too long a time. This movement, starting with Windelband, considers as the more essential difference between the various special sciences whether the logical aim is to find laws or to understand the individual objects. When Spencer separates those more abstract sciences of the physical and chemical energies from the sciences of the concrete individual object, it is a matter of course for him that these sciences of individual objects have to overcome the concrete individuality and have

to find general laws which hold for all the concrete objects of that special group. This newer school, on the other hand, insists that there are sciences which on principle do not want to find laws and are not interested in generalities, but seek to understand and to interpret the concrete objects just in their individuality. All the historical sciences then belong to this group as against the natural sciences which seek the abstract laws. It is evident that this division has again nothing to do with the separation of the different kinds of objects, as any kind of material may be considered from both standpoints. Any process may be on the one side considered as a special case of a general law, interesting thus only in so far as it allows the recognition of any law in it, and, on the other hand, it may be considered in its incommensurable individuality. As a matter of course from such a logical standpoint mental life, too, allows both ways of consideration, and enters thus on the one side, into the law-seeking naturalistic sciences, on the other side, into the historical sciences which seek the unique individuality. Psychology would be the natural science of the mental phenomena.

It can be said that these various motives which have alternated in the classification of science are all still influential to-day, partly as after effects of historical movements like those of Comte and Spencer or Fichte and Hegel, partly as results of conditions which ever again repeat themselves. Especially the different emphasis on different sciences must lead always anew to different methods of grouping. The philosopher, the physicist, the historian, the psychologist insist instinctively on different schemes of classification, the one perhaps influenced by the manifoldness of material, the other by the manifoldness of method or by the variety of purpose; the one anxious to draw sharp demarcation lines between the different fields and thus taking care for an exact logical relation, the other much more anxious to express and to favor in his system the manifoldness of interrelation between the various parts of human knowledge and science. It is thus hardly possible to sketch a classification of sciences which would find general agreement and which would be in principle independent of a particular philosophical standpoint. Yet it may be possible to characterize at Icast certain chief tendencies which can be recognized in the scientific life of our time and which express themselves in the practical division of scientific labor, for instance, in the organization of the higher institutions of learning.

The largest division of knowledge may be that which separates the Theoretical Sciences and the Practical Sciences. It cannot be denied that even this separation offers logical problems. On the one side it has been said that the so-called Practical Sciences, for instance, those of the engineer or of the physician, of the lawyer or of the minister, of the diplomat or of the teacher, are after all theoretical as far as their really scientific content is concerned, while that element in them which makes them practical is an art and not knowledge. The skill in diagnosing disease or teaching pedagogically, or presenting legal argument, can be imparted by training but cannot be communicated in judgments, while every

SCIENCES, CLASSIFICATION OF

science must be a system of judgments. The juristic of theological or technological science, on the other side, seems just as theoretical as history or mathematics. While in this way the knowledge element of the practical sciences would go over into the sphere of the Theoretical Sciences, others have taken the opposite view and have claimed that there is no knowledge but practical knowledge. It is a philosophic doctrine which became popular partly in the sphere of biological thinkers, partly among radical empiricists. They all agree that knowledge is a function of the human organisms which became developed through the practical needs of life. Every science, including all the so-called theoretical ones, thus exist only by their fulfilling certain practical needs of men.

But even if we accept the arguments on both sides, that fundamental division of Theoretical and Practical Science remains justified. The question whether all knowledge serves ultimately practical ends and has its meaning in this relation to practical purposes is an epistemological one; the separation between theoretical and practical sciences, for instance, between physics and engineering, between biology and medicine, is a methodological one. The arguments thus move on different levels. In a philosophical sense every science may be practical; in a logical sense astronomy is strictly theoretical, while the science of bridge-building is not. It is again such logical argument by which we must reject the opinion that all Practical Sciences are ultimately theoretical. Of course, if we were to call theoretical every group of propositions which can be communicated and learned, the science of bridge-building would be just as theoretical as geometry. But the logician has the duty to discriminate between these sciences which consider the facts as such without any relation to our own practical purposes and those other sciences in which the whole grouping of facts, the sifting and combining of the material, is controlled by a practical human end. Medical science is certainly made up of statements which would find their place in a complete theoretical system of the physical world. But in such a concrete description of the processes in the universe the pathological variations of the human organism would play a most insignificant rôle, and a knowledge of the chemical substances which bring harmony again into the organism would be accidental. In the Practical Science of medicine such curing of the diseases becomes a centre of the thought system, and the selection of theoretical facts which are to enter into this science is completely determined by this practical end.

It is thus not even sufficient to characterize the Practical Sciences as applied sciences. The latter expression suggests that the logical difference between the theoretical and practical disciplines is given merely by the fact that the one considers a certain relation theoretically and the other teaches how to apply it. Every Practical Science would thus correspond exactly to a special theoretical science. But the relation is a much more complex one, inasmuch as the Practical Science cannot logically be characterized by the relation to the theoretical starting point, but only by the relation to the practical end. The one end may demand the co-operation of a dozen sciences and one Theoretical Science

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may enter as a means into a dozen different Practical Sciences. We have to acknowledge thus for the Practical Sciences a unique and independent logical structure and the system of practical sciences would demand subdivisions which would not correspond at all to the subdivisions of theoretical knowledge. The chief human ends and aims would have to determine the grouping of these practical disciplines. We might separate thus, firstly, the Utilitarian Sciences; secondly, the Sciences of Social Regulation; and thirdly, the Sciences of Social Culture. In the Utilitarian Sciences the practical aim refers to the world of things; it may be the technical mastery of nature, or the treatment of the body, or the production, distribution and consumption of the means of support. Here belong, therefore, also the disciplines which are studied in the institutes of technology and in the medical schools, in the agricultural institutions, and so on. The Sciences of Social Regulation serve those aims which refer to the mutual relations of subjects; they deal with the political, legal and social problems. The Sciences of Social Culture, finally, refer to those aims in which not the individual relations to things or to other subjects are in the foreground, but the purposes of the development of the subjects themselves; education, art and religion here find their place.

On the other side we find, then, the universe of Theoretical Knowledge as it is studied in the collegiate departments and graduate schools of the universities. Inasmuch as the pure theoretical knowledge for Knowledge's sake made up the original meaning of the word Philosophy, the whole of it might be called Philosophical Sciences in the widest sense of the word. This tradition is still alive, for instance, in the German universities, where all Theoretical Sciences are classed together in the Philosophical Faculty as against the Faculties of Law, Medicine and Divinity; and in a corresponding way the American universities confer the Ph.D., that is, doctor of philosophy, on the student of mathematics or history, of languages or natural sciences. In the historical development of scientific work this unity of theoretical knowledge has been replaced by the most complex manifoldness of scholarly endeavors. One part of theoretical knowledge after the other was dismissed from philosophy as soon as it reached a certain independent importance, and yet philosophy in the narrower sense of the word remained in its traditional rôle of furnishing a theoretical view of the world. It was no longer identical with the totality of knowledge, but it fulfils the same purpose by bringing unity into the manifoldness of scattered special sciences, in examining their fundamental conceptions, their relative values, their methods and the position of the whole of knowledge in the system of human purposes. We can divide, thus, the totality of Theoretical Sciences from the first into the special sciences on the one side and the unifying philosophy on the other.

If we abstract from philosophy, we have thus to subdivide further the specialistic sciences. It would be certainly unfair to the actual tendencies of the scientific life of our day if we accepted the scheme which was more or less modeled after the old positivistic samples. The work which our modern historians are doing, the work of the students of litera

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ture and language, of art and religion, is not done in the spirit of those who saw in it only special applications of natural laws and thus a sociological department of biology. However widely opinions may diverge as to the logic of historical thinking, the whole scientific work of our time is decidedly aware of a fundamental difference between the naturalistic and the historical attitude toward the world. We should thus have to divide the non-philosophical theoretical sciences into naturalistic and historical sciences. The historical sciences which aim toward a connected view of the one development of our human civilization might then be subdivided into political history, history of art, history of religion, history of language, history of economics, and so on.

The natural sciences, on the other hand, which start from the single objects only to find the general laws might well be subdivided with reference to their mutual dependence. We have, then, in mechanics the science of the most general relations of natural objects; and if mechanics represents the top of this pyramid of special sciences, the lower level would be represented by physics and chemistry and the broad basis by astronomy, geology, mineralogy, botany, zoology, anthropology. There would remain uncertain the position of mathematics. In some and very important respects mathematics is a science which studies the formal relations of the natural objects and might thus well be grouped with mechanics. But at the same time mathematics has its fundamental relations to logic and thus to philosophy. The elements of mathematical knowledge are not found, like the physical things, but are created by human thoughts and their relations are valid for the universe because we cannot think the universe otherwise than through the categories of our thought. It must depend upon the emphasis which we lay on the one or the other side of the mathematical science whether we group it with philosophy or with the natural sciences.

We have further to acknowledge that the totality of sciences which are naturalistic in their logical structure cannot be grouped together into that one pyramid whose top is mechanics, because we have so far neglected the psychological sciences. Their general constitution corresponds indeed completely to the natural sciences and is thus also sharply to be separated from the historical sciences; but their material cannot be brought under the category of mechanical movement. The mental phenomena are certainly related to the physical brain process, but the meaning of psychology is 'destroyed if physiological processes are really substituted for mental facts. We have thus to consider the sciences of mental life as a special group of naturalistic sciences. The top of their pyramid would be general psychology, and its basis the special sociological sciences. While psychology is thus independent and not at all merely a part of biology, we have to acknowledge it as a special science and thus to keep it separated from philosophy. That does not deny that by many traditional ties psychology is still nearly related to philosophy and it will remain so, inasmuch as its special work is more than that of other sciences dependent upon a critical philosophical examination of its fundamental conceptions.

Bibliography.— Bacon, 'De Augmentis Scientiaram'; D'Alembert, Encyclopedie, Discours préliminaire'; Comte, A., Cours de Philosophic Positive'; Spencer, The Classification of the Sciences'; Sedgwick, W. T., A Short History of Science (New York 1916); Wuedt, Uber die Einteilung der Wissenschaften'; Congress of Arts and Science, Universal Exposition, Saint Louis 1904 (Vol. I). HUGO MÜNSTERBERG,

Late Professor of Psychology, Harvard University.

SCIENCES, National Academy of, an association incorporated by act of Congress, 3 March 1863, the object of which is to investigate, examine, experiment and report upon any subject of science or art whenever called upon by any department of government; the actual expense of such investigations to be paid from appropriations which may be made for the purpose. The Academy holds a stated session each year at Washington, D. C., in April and another in autumn at such places as may be determined. In 1918 there were 135 active members and foreign associates, comprising investigators in every department of science. Headquarters in Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C. A national research council is connected with the Academy.

SCIENCES, Normative. Normative sciences are systems of propositions whose contents are not facts, but norms; not experiences but values, and whose teaching is, therefore, not that something is, but that something ought to be. There is thus a possible place for logic, ethics and æsthetics, for philosophy of law and religion. Yet it would be meaningless to apply the term, normative sciences, to every kind of logic, ethics and æsthetics. The term has gained its characteristic importance in immediate relation to certain definite philosophical presuppositions. The conception of norm is intended to mean more than an empirical prescription, more than a social agreement which binds the individual through merely social inducements, and also more than a merely biological necessity. A large variety of so-called philosophical enterprises has been at all times and is to-day satisfied with just such sociological or anthropological doctrines of ethical, æsthetic and logical functions. There is indeed no logical difficulty in building up a system of ethics, for instance, which describes and explains how at different times and with different peoples different groups of actions became enforced through the organs of society. Biological sociology can easily show that a social organism can exist only when certain rules of behavior secure a social harmony. From the standpoint of such empirical philosophy, the moral conscience becomes an emotion which is artificially trained by the suggestions of education and the norm of action has no more value than any legal statute which is voted by a majority and reinforced by threatening the violators with punishment. From the same standpoint æsthetics describes and explains the various tastes which have been developed in the history of civilization by the silent agreement of the richest minds, their norms shading off into the changing prescriptions of fashion. Finally, in a similar way, logic becomes a description and explanation of those ways of thought which a

SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT

certain period accepts as leading to such propositions as a particular society calls its truth,

In all these cases it is not meaningless to speak of an ought. Anyone who wants to agree with the demands of the community stands under a certain obligation to act, to feel and to think in the prescribed way. He must subordinate his particular wishes to the general trend, otherwise he will appear immoral or tasteless or erratic. On the other hand it is evident that the so-called norms cannot claim any other authority than as being the expression of the will of a number of individuals and as offering a certain appropriateness for the development of the social organism. Such sociological systems would themselves repudiate every idea of an absolute value for the ethical, æsthetic and logical norms; the impossibility of such a claim would seem to them sufficiently proved by the fact that one nation or one period prescribes to the conscience actions which are forbidden at another time or by another nation. In the same way the history of art shows how the æsthetic standards were changing all the time, and the history of science demonstrates how the scientific theories were always only the expressions of certain tendencies, superseded constantly by new ideas. It would thus appear absurd to claim an eternal value for the norms of behavior, of art and of science which chance to be influential with us to-day.

Those who believe in "Normative Sciences" do not contest the facts which are gathered in such sociological disciplines, and they do not underestimate their value. But they see in all such empirical accounts only contributions to the history of civilization and they believe that the conception of norms can be taken in a deeper sense, independent of the advanced prescriptions of a social organization. Norm means to them an absolute obligation, and only the consequences of the absolute values constitute for them a true Logic, Ethics and Esthetics. Those sociological doctrines then become merely empirical introductions to the true philosophical discipline of valuable acting, feeling and thinking. The norm is then sharply to be separated from anything which in principle changes like fashions and tastes or legal statutes. The norm is that which is absolutely valuable without any reference to any individual or to any social group of individuals, independent alike of the chance obedience which individuals offer to it and of the effects which may result from its application. That two times two is four is a truth which is eternally valuable; that is, which remains valid without any reference to the question whether we understand it or not. No one may think it truth, but everyone who wants to think, ought to think so, if he is to be acknowledged at all times as a logical subject. It is of course meaningless to ask for the reasons or for the causes of such an absolute value. It is the ultimate foothold for our thought. Whatever we might offer as an explanation would have meaning only if we again called it a truth, and if we had to give account of what we mean by that, it could again be only the acknowledgment that it is that thought which we ought to think. It is a thought which we think without reference to our personal interests and without reference to any social demands but simply because we ac

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knowledge an absolute duty to prefer this thought to its opposite.

Of course, there remains the possible objection that we can live our life without respecting such absolute duty; that we can think, for instance, without claiming more than relative value for our thoughts. We should thus be satisfied with the conviction that whatever we call truth may be found untrue by a future generation. But the philosophers of the normative sciences answer that this is an impossible standpoint. A knowledge which is not anchored in any absolute truth contradicts itself. If, for instance, the skeptical sociologist insists that there is no absolute truth, this at least is a judgment which he affirms with the conviction and with the understanding that it is itself a truth of absolute character, otherwise its meaning were lost. A consistent relativism, in short, destroys itself in the field of thought, and the acknowledgment of absolute norms is thus the indispensable presupposition for logic. A particular thought or a particular theory may, of course, be superseded, but the duty to think consistently and in accordance with logical axioms cannot be touched by the changes of civilization.

The same holds true for morality. The particular rules may change, but the meaning of morality is lost if we do not give absolute value to the fulfilment of duty. It depends upon chance conditions, which contents become the duty of the man; but he is to do what his duty prescribes independent of his personal desires, ready to sacrifice himself for that which he acknowledges as his duty; that is a norm of absolute value. The normative ethics, just as the normative logic, thus are formal disciplines. But just their independence of any special content makes those logical and moral forms eternally valid. The same repeats itself finally in the field of art and religion where again the absolute form may be filled with the varying content which the history of civilization offers, but where the form alone gives eternal meaning to the ought which is involved.

HUGO MÜNSTERBERG.

SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT. Definition. The term scientific management characterizes that form of organization and procedure in purposive collective effort which rests on principles or laws derived by the process of scientific investigation, experiment and analysis, instead of on tradition or on policies determined empirically and casually by the process of trial and error. The principal phases of scientific management are: (1) Exhaustive investigation of the elements usable in collective effort manual and machine processes, materials, tools and equipment, physical and psychological operating conditions and their reactions in all possible relations, in order to determine the combination which for any specific purpose is most economical in technical energy human and material; the formulation of the results of such investigation in principles and laws, and the establishment on the basis of such principles and laws of standards of procedure and result; (2) the development and maintenance of such precise and automatic coordination and control of the collective effort as to accomplish, in accordance with the established standards of procedure and result, with

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economy of energy and time, any purpose of the collective effort; (3) organization of the personnel, processes, materials and equipment in such functional co-operative relations as to bring to bear in the collective effort the highest available and developable technical skill in planning, supervision and execution.

A clear understanding of scientific management requires that management be not confused with administration. Management characterizes the organization and procedure through which collective effort is effected; administration characterizes those considerations and decisions which establish the purposes which create the need for management and those broad, governing policies under which the management proceeds. Whether a railroad shall expend capital in further development of a main line for better service or in the acquisition of feeders for larger traffic, whether a manufacturer shall distribute through the established trade channels or through branches and stores established by himself, whether a department store shall sell trade mark merchandise or private brand merchandise, whether any institution shall operate in an extensive or a restricted area, serve a particular class of the public, establish an open or closed shop or admit its workers to some sort of participation in administration and management, are administrative problems. These problems once settled and policies relating thereto determined by the administrative authority (which may overlap or even coincide with the management authority), managerial problems arise concerned with establishing an organization and procedure, and the conduct of such procedure, to carry out the administrative policies. This distinction between administration and management clearly in mind, it may be understood that administration is largely a process of forming judgments, may have serious social, political and other moral aspects, must be largely empirical and can utilize in but a limited way principles and laws determined by the scientific method of investigation; whereas management on the other hand is concerned with the relations and reactions of particular forms of organization, routine, materials, equipment and physical and psychical conditions, may proceed upon principles determined by the scientific method of investigation and is more or less mechanistic in its nature. It may be understood also how, through absence of a clear comprehension of the difference between administration and management, and through a failure to distinguish between the nature and technical efficiency of scientific management per se and the administrative problems (social, political and otherwise moral) arising from its use, confusion and controversy have appeared in the public's attempt to appraise scientific management.

Early History: The System. In 1878 Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915) entered the employ of the Midvale Steel Company as a laborer who had served his apprenticeship as pattern-maker and machinist. He became successively time clerk, lathe gang boss, assistant foreman, master mechanic of repairs and maintenance, chief draftsman, and in 1884, at the age of 28, chief engineer. From the beginning of this period he was in continual struggle with the workmen to increase output, which he

knew from his experience as a workman was extremely low. There developed the anomalous situation, not infrequent in industry of that day, of agreeable personal relations between foreman and individual workmen accompanied by a bitter struggle concerning output between foreman and the workers as a group. Taylor, as foreman, attempted to apply the then customary foremen's method of suasion and force with the usual result of increasing the bitterness of the struggle. Concluding that he could master the situation only by knowing more than the most skilled workman about the technique of production in the shop, and about what a skilled workman should do, he applied his investigative and inventive mind (he came subsequently to hold over 100 patents) to the problem and began two lines of experiments which he pursued through many years with great thoroughness and at great expense. One related to the machine, the tool and the material (metal cutting), and the other to the workman's method of handling the machine, the tool and the material (time and motion study). The former line of experiments, continued later at the Bethlehem Steel Company, led to the discovery of high-speed steel, and revolutionized the art of metal cutting (Transactions American Society of Mechanical Engineers,' XXVIII, 21, 1906); the latter line of experiments greatly broadened led to the development of a co-ordinated system of shop management and ultimately, as an interpretation of that system, to the formulation of the philosophy of management which came to be known as scientific management. The logical and approximately the chronological steps of the development of the system of management, essential to an understanding of the principles which came to be formulated, were: (1) Experiments leading to dependable knowledge of how long a particular machine operated, or a particular manual process performed, by a skilled workman would require to accomplish any specified result, with a given material, according to a specified most effective method of operation, and under specified working conditions. This knowledge, obtained principally by stop-watch studies of unit-time performances, permitted the setting of practicable standards per man-hour or machine-hour higher than the average of current performance; (2) the establishment of a routine of preparation and direction which would ensure maintenance of the conditions under which the standards were set, which led to the working out of such mechanisms as routing, order of work, instruction cards, purchasing materials according to specifications, central stores and controlled conditioning and delivery of materials and tools; (3) the selection and assignment of personnel to machines or operations on the basis of skill and the further development of skill in workers; and (4) the establishment of specialized skilled supervision of workmen to ensure maintenance of conditions and to provide instruction. These objects (3 and 4) were accomplished by functionalized foremanship, a gang boss having general supervision of the order of work in the shop, a speed boss supervising the setting up of the machine and an inspector inspecting the product both at the beginning and at the com pletion of a job. (5) The constant and curren

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