Abstract
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The University of Chicago Press
The postulate of Verstehen is the main argument of social theorists who assert the existence of a dichotomy between the physical and the social sciences. An analysis of the operation of Verstehen shows that it does not provide new knowledge and that it cannot be used as a means of verification. Lacking the fundamental attributes of scientific method, even though it does perform some auxiliary functions in research, the fact of Verstehen cannot be used to validate the assumption of a dichotomy of the sciences.
The advocates of Verstehen define it as a singular form of operation which we perform whenever we attempt to explain human behavior. The idea behind this claim is by no means of German origin. Long before Dilthey and Weber, Vico acclaimed mathematics and human history as subjects about which we have a special kind of knowledge. This he attributed to the fact that the abstractions and fictions of mathematics are created by us, while history, too, is "made by men." He claimed that human beings can possess a type of knowledge concerning things they themselves produce which is not obtainable about the phenomena of nature.
Comte, too, implied that a special procedure is involved in the interpretation of human behavior. He held that the methods used in sociology embrace not only observation and experiment but a further process of verification which makes use of what he vaguely referred to as "our knowledge of human nature." According to him, empirical generalizations about human behavior are not valid unless they are in accord with our knowledge of human nature. Comte was the first to establish what may be termed "the postulate of Verstehen" for sociological research, for he asserted that no sociological demonstration is complete until the conclusions of historical and statistical analyses are in harmony with the "laws of human nature."
In the American sociological field Cooley is the outstanding protagonist of the idea that we understand the human and the social in ways different from those in which we understand the material. His theory is that we can understand the behavior of human beings by being able to share their "state of mind." This ability to share other people's minds is a special knowledge, distinct from the kind of perception gleaned from tests and statistics. Statistical knowledge without "emphatic" knowledge is superficial and unintelligent. Between the two, Cooley claims, "there is a difference in kind which it would be fatuous to overlook."2
The notion of Verstehen is included in Znaniecki's concept of the "humanistic coefficient" and particularly in the role he ascribes to "vicarious experience" as a source of sociological data. According to Znaniecki, vicarious experience enables the student of human behavior "to gain a specific kind of information which the natural experimenter ... ignores altogether."3 I To avoid confusion, we prefer to use the German term instead of its English equivalent, which is "understanding." Understanding is a general term approximating the German Begreifen and does not convey the specific meaning intended by the term Verstehen, which implies a particular kind of understanding, applicable primarily to human behavior. Understanding is synonymous with comprehension, and Lundberg is perfectly right when he asserts (in Foundations of Sociology [New York: Macmillan Co., I9391, p. 5I) that "understanding is the end at which all methods aim, rather than a method in itself." In this sense "understanding" is the goal of all sciences. Verstehen, on the other hand, is viewed by its proponents as a method by means of which we can explain human behavior. The purpose of this paper is to clarify this point and evaluate its significance.

cal generalizations about human behavior are not valid unless they are in accord with our knowledge of human nature. Comte was the first to establish what may be termed "the postulate of Verstehen" for sociological research, for he asserted that no sociological demonstration is complete until the conclusions of historical and statistical analyses are in harmony with the "laws of human nature."
In the American sociological field Cooley is the outstanding protagonist of the idea that we understand the human and the social in ways different from those in which we understand the material. His theory is that we can understand the behavior of human beings by being able to share their "state of mind." This ability to share other people's minds is a special knowledge, distinct from the kind of perception gleaned from tests and statistics. Statistical knowledge without "emphatic" knowledge is superficial and unintelligent. Between the two, Cooley claims, "there is a difference in kind which it would be fatuous to overlook."2
The notion of Verstehen is included in Znaniecki's concept of the "humanistic coefficient" and particularly in the role he ascribes to "vicarious experience" as a source of sociological data. According to Znaniecki, vicarious experience enables the student of human behavior "to gain a specific kind of information which the natural experimenter ... ignores altogether."3 Similarly, Sorokin stresses the need for Verstehen when he insists that the causalfunctional method is not applicable to the interpretation of cultural phenomena. He points out that the social sciences must employ the logico-meaningful method which enables us to perceive connections which ''are much more intimately comprehensible, more readily perceived, than are causalfunctional unities."4 MacIver, too, speaks of a special method which must be used whenever we study social causation. He calls this process "imaginative reconstruction." He claims the causal formula of classical mechanics cannot be applied to human behavior. However, the student of human behavior will find this compensated for by "the advantage that some of the factors operative in social causation are understandable as causes; are validated as causal by our own experience."5 As these brief references indicate, there is no dearth of tradition and authority behind the idea of Verstehen.6 It is, therefore, surprising to find that, while many social scientists have eloquently discoursed on the existence of a special method in the study of human behavior, none has taken the trouble to describe the nature of this method. They have given it various names; they have insisted on its use; they have pointed to it as a special kind of operation which has no counterpart in the physical sciences; and they have extolled its superiority as a process of giving insight unobtainable by any other methods. Hence, Versteken gives me the certainty that a given interpretation of behavior is a possible one. I know that it can happen this way, even though I cannot be certain that such was the case in this instance. My interpretation in itself is not a hypothesis; only its application to the stated case is hypothetical.
Whence comes this certainty that Iachieve through Verstehen? Since the case is simple, the answer is simple: I have enacted it myself. Feeling chilled, I have gathered wood and lighted a fire; therefore, I know. The sense of relevance is the result of personal experience; the connection has been established by me before, so I am certain of its possibility.
However, the answer as stated does not give us a clear picture of the operation the act of Verstehen involves. It will, therefore, be necessary to schematize the evidence and show the steps taken to perform the operation.
Two sets of observations are given in our example. First, there is a sequence of bodily movement (chopping wood, lighting a fire, etc.); second, there is a thermometer reading of a near-freezing temperature. The act of Verstehen links these two facts into the conclusion that the freezing weather was the stimulus which set off the response "making a fire." An elementary examination shows that three items of information are utilized to reach this conclusion: By specifying the steps which are implicit in the interpretation of our case, we have brought out two particulars which are characteristic of the act of Verstehen. One is the "internalizing" of observed factors in a given situation; the other is the application of a behavior maxim which makes the connection between these factors relevant. Thus we "understand" a given human action if we can apply to it a generalization based upon personal experience. We can apply such a rule of behavior if we are able to "internalize" the facts of the situation.
These propositions require further elucidation, but, before we attempt this, let us consider two other examples of behavior analysis.
Case 2.-In one of Lundberg's articles we find the following generalization:
Faced by the insecurity of a changing and hostile world, we seek security by creating "eternal verities" in our thoughts. The more inadequate we feel, the more we indulge in this type of wishful thinking. Conversely, as the clergy has always complained, in times of prosperity and security, man tends to neglect his gods. It has been suggested that the Platonic preference for the changeless may be due to the fact that the Greeks did not have a mathematical technique such as the calculus for dealing with modes and rates of change.7
The opening sentence of this quotation asserts a relevant connection between "belief in eternal verities" (verbal response) and "a changing and hostile world" (stimulus). The subsequent sentences hint at a possible statistical basis for the generalization and cite two historical examples as illustrations. Clearly there is insufficient evidence to substantiate the validity of the interpretation as a tendency in some of us toward idealistic philosophy. We can recognize, though, that the connection asserted by the generalization is relevant; that is, we "understand" it, and so consider it possible.
The act of Verstehen which is implied here involves the same operation we have observed in the first example. We internalize "change and hostility" (B), which we observe to be an attribute of "the world" (A), into "feeling of inadequacy" (B'). The connotation "changeless" (C), which the concept "eternal verities" (D) implies, we internalize into "feeling of security" (C'). Having thus internalized the situation, we can now apply the behavior maxim that a person who feels inadequate (when facing change) will seek security (in something changeless). This procedure provides the mediating links B'-C', which enable us to "understand," or recognize, the relevancy of the causal connection brought out in the generalization.
Case 3.-Competent statistical research has established a high correlation (r = .93) between the annual rate of crop production and the rate of marriage in a given year. There are, of course, statistical methods for proving whether or not this correlation is spurious. In this case, however, we feel that we can forego such tests because the correlation as such does not present a problem to us. We regard the connection as relevant; in short, we say we "understand" why the rate of marriage in farming districts closely follows the rate of crop production.
The act of Versteken which this reasoning implies can be shown to involve the same procedure we have observed in the other examples. We use as items of information the fact that failure of crops (A) materially lowers the farmer's income (B) and the fact that one is making new commitments (C) when one marries (D). We then internalize B into "feeling of anxiety" (B') and C -since the behavior in question is "postponement of marriage"-into "fear of new commitments" (C'). We are now able to apply the behavior maxim: "People who experience anxiety will fear new commitments" (B'-C'). Since we can fit the fact of fewer marriages when crops fail into this rule, we say we "understand" the correlation.
II. THE OPERATION ANALYZED
The examples show that the characteristic feature of the operation of Verstehen is the postulation of an intervening process "located" inside the human organism, by means of which we recognize an observedor assumed-connection as relevant or "meaningful." Verstehen, then, consists of the act of bringing to the foreground the inner-organic sequence intervening between a stimulus and a response.
The examples also suggest that there are special conditions which determine the need for making the intervening process explicit. Some connections appear to be obvious; that is, we recognize their relevancy instantaneously and without any awareness of the implicit assumptions upon which the recognition is based. These are usually connections of which we have direct knowledge, because we ourselves established such connections in the past; or they are connections we have previously examined, so that their occurrence is accepted as an expected or familiar happening.
The need for making the intervening process explicit arises whenever behavior is not routine or commonplace. This is clearly 
THE OPERATION CALLED VERSTEHEN

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the case when we are puzzled. For example, when we were confronted with the evidence that in army units in which promotion was easy there was much more griping about "injustice" than in those units in which very few were promoted, we were puzzled. We would expect the contrary. It is only by internalizing the situation-namely, by introducing the intervening factor of "expectation"-that we are able to understand the connection. If we then assume that in units in which promotion is easy there will be greater expectation of promotion, we can apply the behavior maxim: "The higher one's expectations, the greater one's disappointment if those expectations are not fulfilled." This enables us to "understand" the seemingly paradoxical behavior.
Another condition for making the intervening inner-organic sequence explicit arises whenever we are called upon to explain the reason for asserting a connection between occurrences. This is particularly so when no experimental or statistical data are available and recourse is taken to arguments in support of an interpretation. This happens frequently when interpretations of individual historical events are attempted, as, for example, establishing the cause of a war. Here the behavior in question can be related to earlier events solely on the basis that in terms of assumed feeling-states such a relation is a plausible one.
As has been indicated, the operation of Verstehen involves three steps: (i) internalizing the stimulus, (2) internalizing the response, and (3) applying behavior maxims. The questions now arise as to how to go about the process of internalizing and where we get our knowledge of behavior maxims.
i. Internalizing the stimulus.-To the best of my knowledge, no one has yet specified a technique by which we can objectively attribute certain feeling-states to persons faced by a particular situation or event. The arbitrary procedure we employ to internalize a stimulus consists of imagining what emotions may have been aroused by the impact of a given situation or event. Sometimes we are able to employ definite clues which we have gathered while observing the impact. These may have been gestures, facial expressions, or exclamations or comments. Where there are no such clues, we note the effect produced by an event or situation. Then we imagine how we would have been affected by such an impact. For example, not being a farmer, I never experienced the consequence of crop failure. However, observing that its effect is a curtailment of income, I attribute to the farmer a feeling of anxiety which I recall having felt-or imagine I might feel-under similar circumstances. Thus the internalizing of a stimulus depends largely upon our ability to describe a situation or event by categorizing it and evoking a personal experience which fits into that category.
2. Internalizing the response.-Here, too, no specific techniques are known which permit a definite association between feelingstates and observed behavior. All that can again be said is that we use our imagination when we ascribe a motive to a person's behavior-for example, "fear of new commitments" as the reason for postponing marriage; or, in another instance, when we view the behavior as expressive of some emotion -namely, when we infer that the "griping" of soldiers over promotions evokes a feeling of disappointment. We generally infer the motive of an act from the known or observed modification it produces. If we express this consequence of an act in general terms, we can utilize our personal experience with motives or feelings we had when we ourselves acted in order to produce a similar result.
In cases where both stimulus and response are stated, imagination is facilitated by the fact that both can be viewed as part of a complete situation. This enables us to relate to each other whatever inferences we make about the stimulus and the response. We then select the inferences which "fit" one another in such a way that the given behavior can be recognized as the "solution" (release of tension) of the "problem" (tension experience) created by the impact of the stated event.
3. Behavior maxims.-The generalizations which we call "behavior maxims" link two feeling-states together in a uniform sequence and imply a functional dependence between them. In the cases cited it can be seen that the functional dependence consists of the fact that the feeling-state we ascribe to a given human action is directed by the feelingstate we presume is evoked by an impinging situation or event. Anxiety directs caution; a feeling of cold, the seeking of warmth; a feeling of insecurity, a desire for something that will provide reassurance.
Behavior maxims are not recorded in any textbooks on human behavior. In fact, they can be constructed ad hoc and be acceptable to us as propositions even though they have not been established experimentally. The relation asserted appears to us as self-evident.
This peculiarity of behavior maxims can be accounted for only by the assumption that they are generalizations of direct personal experience derived from introspection and self-observation. Such personal experiences appear originally in the form of what Alexander has called "emotional syllogisms." He has this to say about them:
Our understanding of psychological connections is based on the tacit recognition of certain causal relationships which we know from everyday experience and the validity of which we accept as self-evident. We understand anger and aggressive behavior as a reaction to an attack; fear and guilt as results of aggressiveness; envy as an outgrowth of the feeling of weakness and inadequacy. Such self-evident connections as "I hate him because he attacks me" I shall call emotional syllogisms. The feeling of the self-evident validity of these emotional connections is derived from daily introspective experience as we witness the emotional sequences in ourselves.... Just as the logic of intellectual thinking is based on repeated and accumulated experiences of relations in the external world, the logic of emotions is based on the accumulated experiences of our own emotional reactions.8
Emotional syllogisms when stated in the form of general propositions are behavior maxims. This explains their familiar ring and accounts for the facility with which they can be formulated. In generalizing emotional syllogisms we proceed on the assumption that the emotions of others function similarly to our own.
We find, then, that in all its essential features the operation of Verstehen is based upon the application of personal experience to observed behavior. We "understand" an observed or assumed connection if we are able to parallel either one with something we know though self-observation does happen. Furthermore, since the operation consists of the application of knowledge we already possess, it cannot serve as a means of discovery. At best it can only confirm what we already know.
III. THE OPERATION EVALUATED
From the foregoing description of the operation of Verstehen we can draw several inferences as to its limitations and possibilities. The most obvious limitation of the operation is its dependence upon knowledge derived from personal experience. The ability to define behavior will vary with the amount and quality of the personal experience and the introspective capacity of the interpreter. It will also depend upon his ability to generalize his experiences. In some cases it may be possible to secure objective data on the basis of which the verification of an interpretation can be approximated. However, owing to the relative inaccessibility of emotional experiences, most interpretations will remain mere expressions of opinion, subject only to the "test" of plausibility.
Regardless of the relative ability of people to use it, a second limitation to the use of the operation itself lies in the fact that it is not a method of verification. This means that what in the realm of scientific research we consider a quality of crucial importance, is not an attribute of the operation of Verstehen.
When we say we "understand" a connec-

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