How To Read A Book- A Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading - Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren [142]
The Apparent Ease of Reading Social Science A great deal of social science writing seems like the easiest possible material to read. The data are often drawn from experiences familiar to the reader-in this respect, social 300 HOW TO READ A BOOK
science is like poetry or philosophy-and the style of exposition is usually narrative, already familiar to the reader through his reading of fiction and history.
In addition, we have all become familiar with the jargon of social science and use it often. Such terms as culture ( cross, counter, and sub ), in-group, alienation, status, input/output, infra-structure, ethnic, behavioral, consensus, and scores like them, tend to appear in almost every conversation and in almost everything we read.
Consider the word "society" itself. What a chameleon-like word it is, what a host of adjectives can be placed in front of it, while throughout it continues to convey the broad notion of people living together rather than in isolation. We hear of the aberrant society, the abortive society, the acquiescent society, the acquisitive society, the afBuent society, and we can continue on through the alphabet until we arrive at the zymotic society, which is one that is in a continuous state of ferment, not unlike our own.
"Social,'' as an adjective, is also a word of many and familiar meanings. There is social power, social pressure, and social promise-and then, of course, there are the ubiquitous social problems. The last phrase, indeed, is a fine example of the specious ease that is involved in both the reading and the writing of social science literature. We would be willing to wager that in the last few months, if not the last few weeks, you have read and even possibly written the phrase "political, economic, and social problems." When you read or wrote it, you were probably clear as to what was meant by political and economic problems. But what did you, or the author, mean by social problems?
The jargon and metaphors of much social science writing, together with the deep feeling that often imbues it, make for deceptively easy reading. The references are to matters that are readily familiar to the reader; indeed, he reads or hears about them almost daily. Furthermore, his attitudes and feelings regarding them are usually firmly developed. Philosophy, too,
How to Read Social Science 301
deals with the world as we commonly know it, but we are not ordinarily "committed" on philosophical questions. But on matters with which social science deals, we are likely to have strong opinions.
Difficulties of Reading Social Science
Paradoxically, the very factors we have discussed, the factors which make social science seem easy to read, also make it difficult to read. Consider the last factor mentioned, for instance-the commitment that you as a reader are likely to have to some view of the matter your author is considering. Many readers fear that it would be disloyal to their commitment to stand apart and impersonally question what they are reading.
Yet this is necessary whenever you read analytically. Such a stance is implied by the rules of reading, at least by the rules of structural outlining and interpretation. If you are going to answer the first two questions that should be asked of anything you read, you must, as it were, check your opinions at the door.
You cannot understand a book if you refuse to hear what it is saying.
The very familiarity of the terms and propositions in social science writing is also an obstacle to understanding. Many social scientists recognize this themselves. They object vigorously to the use of more or less technical terms and concepts in popular journalism and other writings. An example of such a concept is that of the Gross National Product ( GNP ) . In serious economic writing, the concept is employed in a relatively limited sense. But many reporters and columnists, some social scientists say, make the concept do too much work. They use it too widely,