These three volumes form a curious mind-full. Two concentrate on whence we come. The third concentrates on whither we are going. Mr. Ardrey and Professor Lorenz dwell on the implications for our present and our future of the earlier other animal forms that we continue. Mr. Kahn and Mr. Wiener are concerned almost exclusively with the kind of animals we are going to be. Even the first two volumes make less of the constancy of man as an animal than we might expect.

The enunciation of what has since been dubbed the Point Four Program sprang from a variety of motives. There was in the aim a very generous portion of sheer American idealism and a desire to help the less fortunate; there was a note of response to a challenge posed for people who believed deeply in what Weber called ascetic mastery over the things of this world; and there was an attempt at a hard-headed realistic program that would “win friends and influence the peoples” of the world in favor of the West in general, but most especially in favor of the United States, in the struggle with the Communists of the USSR for safety and a world of peace. The history of this period and the corollary assessments of good and bad intentions will not be written for some time; for the present, we are concerned with one of the fragment arguments about how these “worthy goals” should be obtained. The goals themselves have found wide agreement in the most divergent camps. No one has effectively challenged the desirability of peace and cooperation among nations, of increased standards of living throughout the world, of improved health conditions, better education, and the like.

Often scholars who call themselves social scientists have not meant by the term science the sort of activity which has generally concerned those calling themselves natural scientists. In the latter sense very little of what has been called “social science” can also be called scientific. The term “social science” as used here refers primarily to the studies which have gone under such titles as Politics (or Government, or Political Science), Sociology, Anthropology, Social and Clinical Psychology, and Economics. To some degree much of what will here be said does not apply with equal justice to the field of Economics. It has a more highly developed system of general abstractions and considerably more precise techniques of analysis than have generally characterized the other social sciences. The difference, however, is one of degree not kind. Many of the difficulties mentioned below certainly plague the field of Economics as well as the others.