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Editor's Introduction To:
The Proper Study Of Mankind

J. E. Pournelle, Ph.D.

For a brief time there flourished Destinies, a series of books that were very like magazines; and they were wonderful. Edited by Jim Baen, with myself as science editor and columnist, Destinies was just that: an inquiry into possible destinies of the human race.

Indeed, the magazine could fairly have been called the official journal of the Advanced Planning Department of Humanity: not so much that it was so excellent as to earn that title, as that it had it by default. No one was interested in competing.

My part in Destinies was a series of columns called "New Beginnings." One of those was half tirade on the social sciences, and half suggestion as to what a social science might be.

Since I wrote that I've heard a lot about the "new" psychology, and "cognitive science." Its practitioners have high hopes; and since hope springs eternal, so do I. Alas, at the moment it's all hope; I've read a number of books and journals on the new sciences of the mind, and all I've seen so far is approach. There has been some healthy clearing of the sterile deadwood of behaviorism, but site clearing is not building. We can continue to hope.

Meanwhile, I see no need to revise this.

 

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Framed