The Sociological Imagination by C. Wright Mills

Among the slogans used by a variety of schools of social science, none is so frequent as, ‘The purpose of social science is the prediction and control of human behavior. ' Nowadays, in some circles we also hear much about ‘human engineering'-an undefined phrase often mistaken for a clear and obvious goal. It is believed to be clear and obvious because it rests upon an unquestioned analogy between ‘the mastery of nature' and ‘the mastery of society. ' Those who habitually use such phrases are very likely to be among those who are most passionately concerned to ‘make the social studies into real sciences,' and conceive of their own work as politically neutral and morally irrelevant. Quite usually, the basic idea is stated as ‘the lag' of social science behind physical science and the consequent need to close up the gap. These technocratic slogans are a substitute for a political philosophy among many of The Scientists of whom I have just written. They are, they suppose, out to do with society what they suppose physicists have done with nature. Their political philosophy is contained in the simple view that if only The Methods of Science, by which man now has come to control the atom, were employed to ‘control social behavior,' the problems of mankind would soon be solved, and peace and plenty assured for all.

Behind these phrases there are curious notions of power, of reason, of history-all of them unclear and all of them in a deplorable state of confusion. The use of such phrases reveals a rationalistic and empty optimism which rests upon an ignorance of the several possible roles of reason in human affairs, the nature of power and its relations to knowledge, the meaning of moral action and the place of knowledge within it, the nature of history and the fact that men are not only creatures of history but on occasion creators within it and even of it. Before I take up such issues, as they bear upon the political meanings of the social sciences, I want briefly to examine the key slogan of the technocratic philosophers-the one about prediction and control.