Periodically, the editors of TIME re-examine and redefine the lengthy roster of departments within which they try to present the significant news events of the week. Occasionally, a section is renamed in the interests of clarity or simplicity; veteran readers may recall that in 1961 National Affairs and Foreign News emerged as The Nation and The World. Sometimes new sections are created, others abandoned, older ones revived. The Law, for example, which was present in TIME'S first issue in March 1923, all but disappeared a few years later, then reappeared in 1963. In 1958, TV & Radio was absorbed by Show Business; Television took over in October 1967.

Basically, new sections are created to provide editorial flexibility. Modern Living, which first appeared in TIME, May 12, 1961, brought together items that might otherwise have been spread throughout the magazine. New sections also prove to be eminently suitable departments for stories that might never have found space in the magazine at all. Essay, which first ran in the issue of April 2, 1965, gave the editors a section with the scope to handle major questions that transcend the boundaries of several departments or demand treatment of near cover length.

This week TIME begins a new department, called Behavior. Its concern is man and his world as perceived through the knowing eyes of psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists and philosophers. Its first two stories offer a sampling of its range: a detailed study of social behavior and a lighthearted look at the tribulations of lefthanders.

Many of the areas that this new section will investigate could conceivably be covered elsewhere--psychology in Medicine, for example, or philosophy in either Education or Books. Nonetheless, the editors believe that 1969 is an appropriate year to begin a single department that will explore these increasingly provocative intellectual disciplines. For one thing, the human sciences appear to have come into their own as intellectual tools for the proper study of mankind by man. For another, the professionals in these fields of study, breaking from their traditional isolation, are beginning to work together. A number of major U.S. universities have established research centers staffed by behavioral scientists--and their work is proliferating so rapidly that much of it has yet to be reported, even in professional journals. TIME'S editors are convinced that an increasingly sophisticated American reading public is more and more interested in what these scientists can contribute to the solution of the problems of environment and personality.

In future issues, the Behavior staff will be writing about almost everything that falls beneath that broad heading, from hippies' communes to animal studies that shed light on man's actions, from ESP to minorities and prejudice. As the major story in the first section, the editors present Sociologist Erving Goffman and his studies of the rules underlying behavior at the impromptu social events that he calls "gatherings." The story was written by Associate Editor John Koffend and edited by Senior Editor John T. Elson, both of whom this week launch a section that TIME intends to use in the months ahead to study every facet of contemporary society.

The Cover: pencil and tempera by Boris Chaliapin.

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