Comments On Warriner's Paper.

The article comments on the paper related to social development in the Philippines. The author of the paper had neglected the vast body of European and American study of and in both Western and non-Western societies. Even though it is justifiable that conceptualization and methodology must be developed in relation to the particular "time-space characteristics" of the research situation, it not justifiable to adopt some as yet undeveloped and essentially unknown "new" theory. The author of the paper had discarded too lightly the enormous experience of "Western" social scientists in observation and interpretive analysis of socio-cultural patterns ranging from the most "scared" to the most nearly "secular." The use of scientific experience remains the most powerful intellectual guide which man has yet devised. The de-emphasis of "quantitativism" in favor of field and problem-oriented study is vitally necessary. The author of the paper easy slip into the concretistic error of assuming that the historical peculiarities of Philippine societal development require unique interpretive tools.