Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2054

Leading editorial, New York Herald Tribune, May 13, 1946, slightly paraphrased and condensed by Heath.

A Science of Human Affairs

At Fordham Saturday President Truman made one of those addresses which, by a somewhat curious custom of our times, statesmen are now and then required to deliver, immediately recognizable as a ritual having next to nothing to do with the practical issues of the times. Such speeches are a standard part of our public scene. But into this one the President did drop one unquestion­ably pregnant idea when he spoke of the imperative necessity for cultivating the “science of human relationships.” The growth of such a science, he sug­gested is the final defense against the atomic bomb and all the other horrors now symbolized by it.

For neither “world government” nor a “stable peace” nor any similar pre­scription can be met save out of some scientific knowledge of the actual rela­tionships of men and women and of the nations and governments which they com­pose. A glance at the world of both foreign and domestic affairs is enough to show that no such science exists. In both fields the great central issues escape anything like analysis or prediction. We are still forced to stumble blindly onward toward cataclysms which none desires, impelled by forces which seem beyond our best controls.

It is not the conventional adjurations (like the President’s) to be wise and upright which will save us, but a firmer knowledge of the real workings of the human institutions in the world. It is the primary task of the coming decades to develop that knowledge out of the small beginnings that have so far been made, out of which there may slowly develop some scientific understanding and thereby a more rational conduct of human affairs.