The Concept of Law in the Social Sciences

T IS the thesis of this paper that the term scientific law can and should mean in the social sciences exactly what it means in any of the other sciences. There seems to be considerable agreement among scientists as well as others that a scientific law is a generalized and verifiable statement, within measurable degrees of accuracy, of how certain events occur under stated conditions. If I were to attempt a more specific statement I would say that a law is (I) a group of verbal or mathematical symbols (2) designating an unlimited number of defined events in terms of a limited number of reactions (3) so that the performance of specified operations always yields predictable results within measurable limits. It will be observed that the definition I have given contains three distinct requirements, to wit: (I) a generalized statement of some behavior sequence; (2) a statement of the conditions under which the generalization is verifiably true; and (3) a statement of the degree to which it is verifiably true under these conditions. Most generalizations in the social sciences fulfil as yet only the first of these requirements. What we do not know is (I) under what conditions these generalizations are true, and