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60 PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL ACTION
scientist, and scientists do not indulge in value judgments regarding their subject matter."
In 1953, George Simpson published a monograph dealing with "Science as Morality." The morality of science-the moral order to which consistent scientists give their highest loyality-is the rational society, the society based on reason. Thus:
The sociologist is reason in action, and he cannot rest content where non-rationality holds sway in our society, whether in the local community or the State. Moreover,, social science needs certain conditions for its survival: Freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly; equality of opportunity so that it may tap resources throughout society; tolerance; and a political apparatus through which it can work for the application of its findings. The idea that as professional people we have no political role to play...is sheer nonsense when freedom is under attack even in our own country-and when is it not?-this is the road to the extinction of the sociologist (1953:45).
Criticism of ethical neutrality reached a new high with the late 1950's work of C. Wright Mills. He expressed his own evaluations in searing analyses of "white collar" workers, "the power elite," the causes of World War three," "the new men of power," and sociologists lacking in meaningful "sociological imagination."
The revolutionary events of the '60's-the black power movement, campus revolts, the Viet Nam war, government spying on civilians, inflation, urban riots-gave unparalleled impetus to a new sociology, (in the U.S.) one that evaluates and criticizes. One of the most notable new sociology papers was "Anti-Minotaur: The Myth of a Value-Free Sociology," published by Alvin Gouldner in 1962. Gouldner's paper seemed to open a floodgate, as symbolized by the 1955 appearance of The New Sociology, edited by Irving Louis Horowitz. By the end of the decade, Gouldner had produced The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology (1970); its central thesis is that sociology is at a turning point because the functionalist view that has prevailed-whether "value-free" or as a partner of the totalitarianlearning warfare-welfare state-cannot do what a sociology worth having ought to do. Therefore, Gouldner calls for the development of a radical sociology whose practitioners are self-understanding and self-controlled (i.e., "reflective") to such a degree that they can adequately help liberate humankind by combining needed social action with vital social analysis.
A remarkably similar conclusion was reached quite independently by Robert W. Friedrichs in his A Sociology of Sociology (1970), published within a month of Gouldner's... Crisis...in 1971, signaling the pervasiveness of the trend toward a new sociology, the American Sociological Association gave one of its most important awards to Friedrichs for his contribution to sociological theory. In the work that was the focus of the award, Friedrichs wrote (1970):
...the old scientist's tale that indifference to application is to be