Generalists Versus Specialists in Social Science: An Economist's View 1

“The theorist can never foresee what the experimenter will find when his range is extended to include fields at present inaccessible.” Man behaved economically, politically, and otherwise long before social scientists theorized about his behavior. In fact, present day social science is of comparatively recent origin, being the product of that progressive specialization which began in the eighteenth century. This specialization has produced diverse problems, with one of which the present paper is concerned. The problem in question is suggested by the central thesis of this paper: that although an economist (or political scientist) must delimit what he studies qua economist (or political scientist), his understanding of economic (or political) behavior is governed by his understanding of human behavior as a whole. While this paper was written primarily from the point of view of an economist to illustrate how psychology and noneconomic social science may contribute to our understanding of economic behavior, it also suggests how political science may draw upon the disciplines treated and indicates how economists envisage a number of questions of fundamental significance to students of government.