Abstract
(1) The stage of speculative experiment : From R. Bacon's “Opus Majus” to the influential thesis of Marx and Engels, there are many ideas and practical movements which have been imbued with the spirit of amelioration and reform. These speculative experiments are the spiritual-historical characher of experiment.
(2) The stage of scientific experiment : Lewin (field theory) and the others was prepared to make ability to experiment a condition of science. But there are many practical and fundamental obstacles and two serious phases of these are : (a) experiment in artificial group is too limited to bring validity of social significance in the findings, (b) experiment in natural group has no bearing on scientific accuracy and real-life condition would effectively restrain irresponsible social experimentation. Therefore, in “laboratory-experiment”, one extreme merit to be avoid rests in the accuracy with which it can be used to test hy-pothesis. The other extreme merit of “experimental social-reformation” lies in the direct benefit that the experimentalist derives from 'doing something with' his subject-matter; in this case, their ability to help will be partly determined by their own identification with their adopted community and with its aims.
(3) Two directions of the experiment and the problem of its integration : Thus, the experiment have two directions in posse, one is “laboratory-experiment”, The other. “experimental social-reformation”. But the former has not the validity of real significance, the later lacks accuracy for responsible reform. To supplement these weak points mutually, it is necessary to integrate these two directions. And the first step to it, is to pull together some relevant findings in laboratory and in field. The most hopeful approach to it, is, on the one hand, to immerse oneself first in the length and breadth of the particular problem of concern, and then to bring real significance into laboratory, on the other hand, to bring tly accuracy for responsible reform, with its trial-prepense “laboratory-experiment” Thus, it seems to me, the concept of “reference group” and the idea of “inter-disciplinary approach” (Sherif, M.) would be very useful. When these weak points are supplemented mutually in this way, social science can gain the strange power, like the atomic bomb.
