• DOI:10.1086/351931
• Corpus ID: 145259563

Aliis exterendum, or, the Origins of the Statistical Society of London

@article{Hilts1978AliisEO,
  title={Aliis exterendum, or, the Origins of the Statistical Society of London},
  author={Victor L. Hilts},
  journal={Isis},
  year={1978},
  volume={69},
  pages={21 - 43}
}

• V. Hilts
• Published 1 March 1978
• Economics
• Isis

A PERENNIAL PROBLEM of social scientists has been the need to distinguish between two sorts of inferences: those which are motivated by scientific considerations and those which are motivated by the political or social leanings of the scientist himself. While it may be true that all scientists work within given conceptual frameworks, the social scientist is uniquely vulnerable to charges that his theory lacks objectivity on the grounds of personal bias. Even when he has been scrupulous in his methodology, the very choice of his subject of investigation may well have been dictated by personal experiences as much as by the "state of the art." In many ways the social scientist seems to be confronted by an almost impossible task: he must be both scientific and relevant. If he is oblivious to relevance, as measured by current social and political needs, his theories may have little meaning or significance. But if he strives for relevance, he risks transcending the bounds of science. An interesting example of an attempt to resolve this dilemma is furnished by the early history of the Statistical Society of London, which was founded in 1834. The members of the Statistical Society aimed to be "the architects of a science or of sciences," yet it was a goal difficult to achieve, since the establishment of the society was as much a response to political factors as it was to scientific developments. In order to save themselves from the accusation that their "science" was really politics in disguise, the members of the society vowed to exclude all "opinions" from their proceedings. Symbolizing this vow was their seal (Fig. 1), a wheatsheaf across which was written aliis exterendum-"to be threshed out by others." Their aim was thus simply to gather the facts, leaving it to others to draw whatever conclusions might be warranted. In this way both relevance and objectivity were to be maintained, but only at the cost of theory itself. It is the task of this paper to show why the members of the Statistical Society opted for this particular resolution of their dilemma, and to illustrate what may be a more general moral-that such solutions are themselves a product of social and political as well as scientific factors.