Public Opinion and the Classical Tradition* The speculative approach to public opinion characteristic of the last century and the current empirical approach may be seen as supplementary rather than antithetical. Modern research techniques can confirm and develop notions advanced by classical writers, while authors such as Dicey and Bryce can help direct present-day researchers to significant problems and suggest new ways of analyzing empirical data. Merging of the two approaches will hasten the development of a more adequate theory of public opinion. As Past President of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, and first recipient of the Julian L. Woodward Memorial Award, the author has received the highest recognition the opinion research profession can give. Furthermore, the breadth of l i s interests have been such that there are few areas of any social science where students do not find his publications required reading. During most of the past ten years he has served as Chairman of the Department of Sociology of Columbia University.
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UITE possibly the emergence of empirical social science will one day be considered an outstanding feature of the twentieth century. But its birth has not been without travail. Hardest have been its struggles with what we shall call the classical tradition. After all, for two thousand years or more people have thought and written about human and social affairs. Has the empirical trend been an enriching innovation? Has it had a pernicious effect? The matter has certainly been much discussed in recent years. The debate over the study of public opinion probably provides the best case in point. Since about the beginning of the eighteenth century a steadily increasing amount has been written on this subject by political scientists, by historians and, recently, by sociologists. Toward the beginning of the twentieth century, however, this classical tradition was confronted by the empiricists, who rallied around the notion of attitudes. The empirical tradition in opinion and attitude research began modestly enough in Germany with simple laboratory experiments on problem solving, in which the notion of "mental sets" was carved out. It gained strength from the work of the Chicago school of sociologists, which brought the study of attitudes and values into play. Immediately thereafter, the psychometricians under the leadership of Thurstone introduced the portentous problem of measurement. And finally came the ~ u b l i copinion research ~ e o p l ewho, on
*This may be identified as publication No. A-230 of the Bureau of Applied Social Research, Columbia University.