Human Society and Scientific Law

The idea that scientific laws might apply to man and his society is not much more than one hundred years old, and even today many historians and other students of the so-called humanities fiercely deny the possibility of ascertaining sociological or historical laws similar to the laws of nature. In this sense, Anglo-American epistemology makes a distinction between the sciences proper and the humanities, as German and other European scholars distinguish between Natur- and Geisteswissenschaft , the natural sciences and the knowledge of cultural phenomena. Such distinctions are due, in part to an outmoded conception of the scientific law, but primarily to an even more obsolete conception of man, his society, culture, and history. (1) Until the end of the nineteenth century, a scientific or natural law predominantly meant a law of causality, and such a law implied that the same cause always and invariably “produced” or “evoked” the same effect. The natural law, in this context, was not even a product of scientific cognition, but allegedly inherent in nature itself. The scientist merely “discovered” actually prevailing laws. This was the viewpoint of the so-called realistic school of thought. In a twofold way this concept of a law has been shaken.