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Show Abnormality of Groups Can Easily Be Turned Into Collective Insanity By PHOF. E. A. BURTT, University of Chicago. TI1E individual member of any class, profession or religious group, do matter how intelligent or conscientious he may be, is seldom able to realize the errors and fallacies' believed in by his own group as a whole.- Group abnormality, sometimes becoming t case of collective insanity, is a force so powerful that it can impel people to beheve in even destructive ideas, and what is worse, act upon them. Only by the assumption of group abnormality can we explain the periodic pe-riodic outbursts of fanaticism and militaristic frenzy which have worked such havoc upon the human race. It is by thff consideration of this'phenomcnon that we are able fully to appreciate the extraordinary achievement of the scientific-attitude in developing the habit of arriving at truth through the use of some tentative tenta-tive statement termed an "hypothesis." " , V ' An hypothesis represents what the scientific guesses may be the truth, and which he employs as a working attitude pending the final re suits of experiment and observation. If demonstrated "wrong, the hypothesis hy-pothesis is discarded for a new and better statement. Such an attitude is directly opposite the view derived from theology, the-ology, which starts with faith in something considered eternally and un changeably true, and extends this faith to include every detail in the scheme. The scientific attitude is that of an agnostic, which does not mean atheist, but rather the open mind. Habit of working by tentative statements has developed a true "law of progress" for Kumanity, the open-minded attitude which will eventually eventual-ly enable mankind to control many future conditions now regarded as beyond be-yond human power. |