Sorokin, Willey Oppose Soc. Rel. Center But Differ on Other Committee Findings

A professor of Sociology and a professor of Anthropology last night agreed that the Department of Social Relations does not now need an integration of physical facilities recommended recently in the report of the Faculty Committee on the Behavioral Sciences.

Pitirim A. Sorokin, professor of Sociology, said that "the greatness of a university depends upon the men who are in it. If the University," he continued, "can afford to put up a building which would house the fields of psychology, anthropology, and sociology, so much the better, but we can go along with our present facilities."

Gordon R. Willey, Jr., Bowdich Professor of Anthropology, said "most of us in the anthropology department are pretty well set in our offices in the Peabody Museum. A building is certainly not the crucial thing for integration," he explained. The report called the Littauer Center, after which the proposed social relations building would be patterned, "a testament to the values of contiguity."

Doubting the wisdom of setting up common facilities for psychology, sociology, and anthropology, Sorokin called the alliance of these three disciplines "incidental and accidental. They are as closely related to each other as they are to any other branch of the social sciences or the humanities," he said.

The report saw a great need for an anthropological linguist. "The highly developed state of linguistics and the importance of the field to the anthropologist make the absence of the person who is primarily a linguist our most conspicuous weakness in the field. "If we ever get another permanent appointment," Willey said, "a linguist is what we would like to have."

More Research

In the area of Social Relations the committee recommended that "first priority be given to conserving and developing the momentum in research already present at Harvard," and that "ventures into new areas be undertaken only if this first objective has been assured."

The report saw in addition the need for increased research funds.

However, Sorokin called the rule for determining the value of a department "its creativity, not its funds," citing as an example the quality of the work which the Department of Sociology has done in the past when it was smaller than today.

Sorokin challenged the current application of the term "behavioral sciences" to history, government, economics, psychology, sociology, and anthropology. "The term," he said, "is a misnomer, and it can rightly be applied to any form of human knowledge."