When We were Very Young

Abstract

In May 1960 The Twentieth Century devoted an edition to sociology in Britain. It appeared at the beginning of a decade in which the subject was to extend into higher education as never before. Donald MacRae’s claim for sociology in his essay could have served as a good text to support the advance:

Sociology can provide an admirable education. Its theoretical classics are as difficult as bracing and as rewarding as those of modern philosophy; its concern with the practical and present involves commitment to reality of a profound character; its difficulties are of a kind to encourage both intellectual rigour and a healthy scepticism about the limitations of human knowledge and capacity; its concern with justice and values restores the sociology student to a central and generous area of philosophical concern; its techniques are useful for the ordinary business of life and involve some understanding of the powers of both quantitative and comparative reasoning.

(‘Between Science and the Arts’, p. 442)