B. Types of Sciences and Their Relations
a. Psychology and sociology are inductive sciences, i.e their laws are derived through
observation and experiment; ethology is a deductive science, i.e. its laws are derived logically from the laws of another science, viz. psychology.
b. Although empirical laws are quire useful in common life they are not really reliable until they are understood through universal laws, which causally explain them. According to Mill, “Unless we have resolved the empirical law into the laws of the causes on which it depends and ascertained that those causes extend to the case which we have in view, there can be no reliance placed in our inferences.” Hence, the empirical laws of sociology must be explained through ethology, they are to be reliable.
c. Although empirical laws of sociology must be derived from laws which explain them in order to be something more than approximate generalizations, the fact that they are formulated through observation or experiment makes possible their providing empirical tests of any deductive derivations.
