In the Study of Society

IN THE STUDY OF SOCIETY It is clearly impossible to attempt here even in outline a dis cussion of the logical and epistemological aspects of all the social sciences. Attention will be confined to a consideration of the validity of some of the categories that have been applied to the phenomena of social life by those who have approached the sub ject from the point of view of biology. (See SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY.) The Theory of a Social Organism.—Societies are frequently said to form organic wholes, and it is implied that there are funda mental laws of development common to organisms and societies (cf. especially Dr. Rivers, Psychology and Politics, p. 62). There are certainly many respects in which organic wholes and societies do resemble one another in a striking manner. Both may be said to constitute wholes consisting of parts standing to one another in relation of mutual causal dependence of such a nature that the character of the parts depends upon their relation each to the remainder. Both are systems which maintain themselves as wholes by a correlation of functions. Both exhibit a certain adaptability and plasticity of adjustment to a varying environment. Societies like organisms, moreover, vary greatly among themselves, in complexity, differentiation of function, degree of central control and of inner unity or harmony. Accordingly a classification of forms of unity among organisms may prove suggestive in dealing with types of societies. Nevertheless the analogy breaks down in important points, This may be seen best by a comparison between the "higher" organisms and the "higher" societies. In the first place, the latter are much more plastic than the former. In the higher organisms the parts tend to lose their independence, they have no "freedom" in relation to the whole. The more developed a society is, on the other hand, the greater the mobility and freedom and independence of its constituent parts. In the second place, the relations of the parts to the minor or secondary systems within the greater whole differ profoundly in the two cases.

The parts of an organism cannot move from one system to another nor interchange functions so readily as can the constituent parts of the higher societies. In short, the individuality of the parts in societies is such that the wholes formed out of their interrelation may well be of a different order than the wholes formed out of the union of cells in the living organism, and the laws of develop ment applying to the former species of wholes may differ radically from the laws applying to the latter.

Biological Change and Social Change.

A study of social change confirms this conclusion. Social change appears to be in the main independent of alteration in racial or inborn characters and proceeds rather by modification of tradition having but little relation to change in biological types. In support of this view several considerations may be offered. To begin with it is generally accepted that in historical times, at any rate, no changes of impor tance have occurred in either the physical or mental innate equip ment of man. Accordingly the vast historical changer, that have taken place cannot be attributed to variations in germinal struc ture. More specifically there is no evidence that any of the striking advances made at various critical periods in human his tory, were due to or accompanied by change in the inherited con stitution of man (cf. Galton, Inquiry into Human Faculty, p.

129). The causes leading to sudden eras of progress are to be found rather in a new orientation given to human faculty, furthered, it would seem usually, by contact with new or strange cultures. Culture contact is more important in this respect than race contact or fusion. Finally forms of culture do not appear to be definitely correlated with forms of race grouping. In other words biological groups do not correspond to culture groups and so far no success has met the efforts made by anthropologists to link up species of civilization with the genetic qualities of race types (cf. T. H. Morgan, Evolution and Genetics, 1925, pp. 206-207).