ms of
scientific progress. There is a general agreement that if there is to be
an increase in the knowledge that men possess regarding the mechanical
forces, the only sure way of gaining this knowledge is to weigh,
measure, describe and classify. This applies to solids, liquids, gases,
rocks, plants, animals, and even to the structure and function of the
human body. But when it comes to social institutions, even the wisest
hesitate and question. Is it possible that social knowledge can be
gained only in this way?

There is no other way! Like the individuals of which it is composed,
society must investigate, experiment, and learn through trial and error.
Indeed, that is the tacitly accepted method by which social knowledge is
accumulated. History is a record of social experiments--not so
consciously directed nor so carefully planned as the experiments that
are taking place in the chemical laboratory, but experiments none the
less. What other explanation can account for the many forms of family
relationship, the many varieties of religious organizations, the
numerous types of political institutions, the multitude of educational
institutions. "Educational experiments" are the commonplaces of the
pedagog. Slavery was one of society's economic experiments, feudalism
was another, capitalism is a third. Through successive generations these
institutions have been built up, reformed, discarded and replaced. The
history of social institutions is a history of social experiment--of
community progress through trial and error.

Obstacles are thrown in the way of the social experimenter. Vested
interests seek to convince the credulous and the ignorant that whatever
is, is right. The jobs of office holders, the possessions of property
owners, the security of ruling classes, depend upon their ability to sit
on the lid of social experiment. "Do not touch, do not think, do not
question!" is the warning of masters to their social vassals. Those who
eat of the apple of experiment acquire the knowledge of good and evil,
and with this knowledge comes the desire to reject and destroy the evil
while they hold fast and augment the good.

Those who have learned, and who have dared to protest, have been
ridiculed, persecuted, outlawed. Sometimes their bones have bleached on
the gibbet or rotted in dungeons. Still, the jail, the gallows and the
lynching-bee have not kept experimenters quiet in the past, and they
will probably not do so in the fu