A Science Of Mankind?

In "Time Patrol," a "psychographic historian" knows that war, poverty and tyranny occur because machine technology had arisen in a divided world, not because of any innate human evil. Time traveling, he tries to unite the world earlier.

In Planet Of No Return, a "psychomed" says that:

a human being can believe several mutually contradictory propositions;

few learn how to think;

those few "'...think only with the surface of their minds.'" (Chapter 2, p. 16);

under the surface are conditioned reflexes and rationalized fears, hates and longings;

humanity is at last finding a science of man that will make it possible to bring up children to be sane but large scale results will take a long time;

much insanity, left over from history, is built into society.

This is the central issue of Anderson's Psychotechnic History and should be a major theme of sf although with writers presenting different answers:

Is science possible when subject and object are identical?
Different societies will ask social scientists different questions.
How much self-knowledge is possible through non-scientific practices like art and meditation?