SOCIOLOGY. The following exposition does not attempt to mediate between the numer ous claimants to the name "Sociology." It frankly applies the name to the attempts to establish a division of knowledge co-ordinate in dignity with the older social sciences. It indi cates the actual growth and present character of sociology, especially in recent years in the United States, as the subject is understood by such a representative body as The American Sociological Society. (Consult Proceedings, Vols. I-XIII).
Sociology is primarily one of the many techniques which make up the equip ment of social science as a whole. In the sec ond place, each of these techniques is a growing body of knowledge arranged and interpreted ac cording to the respective special standards, and each in turn is a more or less explicit body of conclusions about the bearing of the respective findings upon contemporary problems both of interpretation and of control. Chief among the other techniques for scientific dealing with social relations are psychology, anthropology, ethnology, comparative philology, history, political economy, political science and statistics. The task of social science in gen eral, or the co-operation of these techniques, is to make human phenomena intelligible, and eventually as far as possible controllable. This task involves determination of the norm or norms according to which control should be exercised. The sociological technique is that variant among the social science techniques which proceeds from the perception that, after allowing for their purely physical relations, all human phenomena are functions not only of persons, hut of bersons whose personality on the one hand expresses itself in part through the formation of groups, and on the other hand is in part produced through the influence of groups. In brief, sociology is that technique which approaches knowledge of human experi ence as a whole through investigation of group aspects of the phenomena.
In order to understand the place of sociology in the whole apparatus of knowledge, it is necessary to become familiar with the fact that the growth of the asocial sciences') since 1800 has been essentially the evolution of a single scientific method, a method which, while be coming more specialized and diversified on the one hand, is becoming both more unified and more comprehensive on the other. At the same
time it is assembling more and more coherent body of knowledge interpretation. The outcome has been not that the different divisions of social science are more isolated from one another than in 1800, but that the best work in each is certain to show effects of contact with all. This is not the traditional view. Until recently the almost universal opinion among social scientists was that the 19th century was an era of the development of many independent sciences of human life. It is not an excursus from our subject, therefore, but a necessary introduction to the most mature views of the subject, to dwell at some length upon our radi cal proposition.
History.—The problem of knowledge in the field of social science reduces to this: What u the meaning of human experience, and to what extent have we developed a technique which may be relied upon to ascertain more of that meaning! To explain the origins of sociology, we must answer the question, What has social science in general done toward working out a reliable method of interpreting human experi ence? (Consult Small, (The Meaning of Social Science)). If this question were answered in full it would include an account of the evolu tion of philosophy and psychology since Locke in England, since Descartes in France, since Wolff in Germany. We may merely summarize to the effect that modern philosophy and psychol ogy have found common ground with all posi tive science in the commonplace that all con vincing interpretation of experience must be generalization of experiences. To this com monplace we may add the proposition which is not equally trite, which experience is neverthe less steadily enforcing, viz., that valid social science cannot be many; it must be one.