Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-12-29
ERA OF STATISTICS
is SEEN IN OFF|NG
Economic Society Head Sees
Time Coming for Guidance
by Exact knowledge.

u SLdJlSLlCdl peTlOQ, WI1cn IIle pEeSen
will be guided by exact knowledge o.
the past, Edwin F. Gay president o.
the American Economic Association, tolc
a combined meeting of the Economic
Sociological and Statistical Societies al
the Washington Hotel last night
But" he insisted. Eve are now per-
hitting records which will be precious
to our successors to be destroyed by
hundreds of tons daily.
III we are to have better social con-
trolls" he said. I'VE must have more
records and more men trained to inter-
pref them. A study of the operative
social forces in a period of change will
yield insights and understandings OF
the past. Ordinarily one does not wit
ness and record those day-by-day
changes in ones own attitude which
are participated in by the majority OF
ones fellow countrymen. New con-
ceptS are diffused and slip noiSeleSSly
into mems minds until the new face
of the world becomes manifest with
apparent suddenness. Thus there is
strong reason to collect and preserve
the commonplace documents of the i'm
mediate past"
Social Scientist of Future,
Professor William F. Ogburn, presi-
dent of the American Sociological
Society, in his presidential address pre-
dicted new type of social scientist in
the future, interested only in exact
methods of accommodating knowledge in
stead of devoting much of his time to
weaving theories. of how things ought
TO have happended.
DR.. Edwin B. Wilson, president of
the American Statistical Society, told
OF the application of statistical methods
to the problems of the social sciences.
THE United States of the World is
an achievement toward which men may
confidently press foreward." declared
Prof. Hornell Hart of Bryn Mawr Col
lege yesterday afternoon, after showing
mathematical curves of progress in
brain capacity, mechanical perfection
speed and expectation of life from the
beginning of the human race. These
he insisted, have climbed upward, al
though there have been long intervals
without progress.
One of the most notable Of these ad-
vances, he said, was the development
OF progressively larger and larger en-
pires, from that of the early Egyptians
in 1900 BIC. through the AsSyrian,
Persian and Roman to the present Brit
ish Empire. These larger and larger
populations under one government, he
said, demonstrated 1.-THE power of hui
man purposes to knit themselves into
cooperative units" and the British
Empire. although itAmay fall in a few
years, due to its mistreatment of some
of the native populations under its con-
troll, represents the high tide in the
human power to work together"
Future Great Empire Due.
Since the curve has been ever up
ward, he insisted. 1t Is fair to assume
that the future will see even a greater
empire, including all the peoples of the
world.
Some of DR.. Harris conclusions were
attacked by Prof. P. A. Sorokin of the
University Of Minnesota, who declared
that the curves, especially those show
ing increasing brain capacity in the
pre-human field, we're built on unveri-
fed data. Prof. Sorokin, presented as
q 'behaviorist" sociologist. insisted that
he considered psychological behavior
ism the bunk"
Dr. Hart had insisted that mankind
IS achieving a greater capacity for
beauty in expression, citing the i'm
provementS In musical instruments from
the 1.000-pipe organ of 600 AID. to the
16,000-pipe organ of today, and the
power of preserving and spreading
music through the photograph and the
radio. DR.. Sorokin insisted that the
and jazz bands and that the present
age was producing no Beethovens and
Mozarts.
Earlier in the day Prof. Hart figured
prominently in a discussion of the orr
gins of religion and the concept of God
in the mind Of primitive man. He
presented a basic concept of mana, ="
term taken from the Melanasian
Islanders and meaning a mysteri-
fhril1fNu NuOy1dor-xffNrIfTez ar
believed to pertain to and now out Of
certain objects and persons.
Presidents Pen Is Mana"
This idea of mana" he insisted, OBJ
tains even today in the United States
Thus, he illustrated, there is eagerness
to obtain the pens with which the
President signs certain popular bills
They are just ordinary pens until he
invests them with something which
makes them desirable. The mana"
has flowed out of him into them.
There would be a subtle difference,
he pointed out, between a human skull
a million years old and a model Of it.
Everybody would want to touch the
former. while displaying only a mild
interest in the latter. The popular
mind would have invested the former
with mana"
Much Of the origin Of religions, he
held, can be traced to this universal
concept Of mana" which seems natu-
rally to pertain to certain objects.
Thus corpse, with the mystery of
death upon it, has sort of mana" he
said. He attributed the recent enor-
nous pilgrimageS to a Massachusetts,
graveyard to the still strong belief in
mana" flowing from the bones of a
long dead priest into all the surround
1ngs of the grave
This might be explained, Prof. Hart
said, on the conditioned reflex theory
of behaviorist psychology, pointing out
that conditioned reflex was only an
other term for the Association of
ideas" used by older anthropologists
in their efforts to give a rational ex-
PLANTATION Of the origins of religion.
The objection to this mechanistic in
depreciation, which tends to destroy all
religious belief, he commended, is that
there are apparently verified instances
where mana" works. where the exer-
else OF the various entertainments upon
persons unknown to them has had dis
astTouS consequences for them, throw
ing out the explanation that the cures
were wrought by suggestion.
Skeptic VOuched for Cures.
Such sceptics as the French psychia-
trist, Janet, he said, have vouched for
cures OF complicated organic diseases
at the Grotto Of Lourdes. The term
suggestion" itself. popular with psy-
biologists, he said, explains nothing,
for It is only another word for the
primitive mana"
He insisted that science could not af-
ford to discard without much further
consideration the possibility that some
mana" represents real forces, the ma
ture Of which is still unknown. He in
sisted that there are well verified In
stances Of the working Of suggestion,