Correlation

“ Is the relation between brain and consciousness one of correlation; may we, according to the evidence, believe it to be one of correlation? Physiological materialism is an extension of the doctrine of correlation to consciousness. It is needful to know what is meant by correlation. Correlation is a necessary, reciprocal production. "Any force capable of producing another may be produced by it. Each mode of force is capable of producing the others, and none of them can be produced but by some other as an anterior force. ”

“ When states of society, and the causes which produce them, are spoken of as a subject of science, it is implied that there exists a natural correlation among these different elements; that not every variety of combination of these general social facts is possible, but only certain combinations; that, in short, there exist Uniformities of Co-existence between the states of the various social phenomena. ”

“ The loudest demand of sociology today is for the addition of description to description so that, with equally accurate observations of the various elements entering into social combinations, an intelligent view of their correlation is possible. ”

“ The harmony which we have discovered in development is also part of this correlation. When, later on, we come to discuss analytically our well established entelechy as the ultimate basis of individual organisation, we shall be able to gain more satisfactory ideas with respect to the meaning of the non-causal but necessary connection, embraced in the concepts of type and of correlation of parts. ”

“ Carelessness here is fatal to success.
2. When the pupil reads a correlation of mine, he should indicate the relations between the words by writing in the figures 1, 2, or 3, and he should pursue the same course with his own correlations.
3. Ofttimes “extremes” are in different planes of thought, so occasionally three intermediates are necessary to cement them; two are often required; but after considerable practice in making correlations one usually suffices.
What is fatal to success in making correlations? What do the figures 1, 2, and 3 indicate in Rule 2? ”

“ How far these figures measure definite relations between different and specific traits, how far they measure the degree to which one's impressions of various traits conspire to make up one's notion of other characteristics, or how far they measure only the degree of confusion that exists as to the precise meaning of the various words, it is exceedingly difficult to say.
IX. What degree of correlation exists among the academic records in the various college subjects? Is the individual who stands high in certain subjects likely to stand either high or low in other subjects or in all subjects? ”

“ Hence if man goes on selecting, and thus augmenting, any peculiarity, he will almost certainly modify unintentionally other parts of the structure, owing to the mysterious laws of correlation. ”

“ Setting out, then, with this general principle, that the properties of the units determine the properties of the aggregate, we conclude that there must be a Social Science expressing the relations between the two with as much definiteness as the natures of the phenomena permit. Beginning with types of men who form but small and incoherent social aggregates, such a science has to show in what ways the individual qualities, intellectual and emotional, negative further aggregation. ”

“ Empirical psychology has established the fact that we can know a quality only by means of its contrast with or similarity to another. By contrast and agreement a thing is referred to a correlate, if this term may be used in a wider sense than usual. The occasion of the introduction of the conception of reference to a ground is the reference to a correlate, and this is, therefore, the next conception in order. ”

“ Then we must remember that these external and internal evolutions of social life, take place often unconsciously, making comparisons and distinctions without reflecting on their nature or limits; we must remember that it is the business of reflective comparison, of the comparative method, to retrace this development consciously, and to seek the causes which have produced it. ”

“ Now, in whatever science there are systematic differences of opinion—which is as much as to say, in all the moral or mental sciences, and in Political Economy among the rest; in whatever science there exist, among those who have attended to the subject, what are commonly called differences of principle, as distinguished from differences of matter-of-fact or detail,—the cause will be found to be, a difference in their conceptions of the philosophic method of the science. ”

“ And I for my part cannot but consider the talk of the contemporary sociological school about averages and general laws and predetermined tendencies, with its obligatory undervaluing of the importance of individual differences, as the most pernicious and immoral of fatalisms. Suppose there is a social equilibrium fated to be, whose is it to be,—that of your preference, or mine? There lies the question of questions, and it is one which no study of averages can decide. ”

“ If we contemplate the whole field of human knowledge, attained or attainable, we find that it separates itself obviously, and as it were spontaneously, into two divisions, which stand so strikingly in opposition and contradistinction to one another, that in all classifications of our knowledge they have been kept apart. These are, physical science, and moral or psychological science. ”

“ But every attribute of the social body is influenced by innumerable causes; and such is the mutual action of the co-existing elements of society, that whatever affects any one of the more important of them, will by that alone, if it does not affect the others directly, affect them indirectly. The effects, therefore, of different agents not being different in quality, while the quantity of each is the mixed result of all the agents, the variations of the aggregate can not bear a uniform proportion to those of any one of its component parts. ”

“ And as ceteris paribus our tense awareness of active states always throws into insignificance a passive state sandwiched between them; so, bent as we are upon our red and black extensions, and their comparative lengths and directions, we shall treat the uninteresting white extensions as a blank, a gap, as that which separates the objects of our active interest, and takes what existence it has for our mind only from its relation of separating those interesting actively measured and compared lines. ”

“ Come, tell me that!"
"Well," said I, "I suppose there would be a difference according to circumstances in people's action about these matters."
"I should think so, indeed," said he. "At all events, experience shows that it is so. Amongst us, our differences concern matters of business, and passing events as to them, and could not divide men permanently. ”

“ The problem of the individual involves in its details the study of all the social influences and institutions,—family, school, church, the law, the newspaper, the story, the motion picture, the occupations, the economic system, the unorganized personal relationships, the division of life into work and leisure time, etc. But the human wish underlies all social happenings and institutions, and human experiences constitute the reality beneath the formal social organization and behind the statistically formulated mass-phenomena. ”

“ The terminology of relationship is only a specially favourable example by means of which to show the value of an attitude towards, and mode of treatment of, social facts which hold good, though less conspicuously, throughout the whole field of sociology. In social, as in all other kinds of human activity, psychological factors must have an essential part. I have myself in these lectures pointed to psychological considerations as elements in the problems with which the sociologist has to deal. ”

“ For us who deal, not with the various forms of animal life, but with the various products of human intelligence, the legitimacy of the Comparative Method rests on the well-ascertained similarity of the working of the human mind in all races of men. ”

“ Causal Relations in Society.—A review of the countless attempts and methods to establish the relations of cause and effect that obtain in society leads to the conclusion that the statistical method cannot suffice to establish such relationships. ”

“ What is actually known, as a matter of empirical science, is that certain constant relations are observed to hold between the members of a group of events at certain times, and that when such relations fail, as they sometimes do, it is usually possible to discover a new, more constant relation by enlarging the group. ”

“ It is impossible for an abstract science like sociology to exhaust the whole abundance and complications of historical action when it exhibits the separate typical relationships. For, however correct may be the assertion of relationship, and however influential, the concrete occurrence will always contain a number of elements beside this, and in the final, visible, aggregate effect the influence of the typal form may be concealed. ”

“ From these negative justifications for the belief that sociology is a science, we turned to the positive justifications. We found that every aggregate of units, of any order, has certain traits necessarily determined by the properties of its units. Hence it was inferable, a priori, that, given the natures of the men who are their units, and certain characters in the societies formed are predetermined—other characters being determined by the coöperation of surrounding conditions. ”

“ This is, however, a process very different from the interpolation of psychological facts as links in the chain of causation connecting social antecedents with social consequences. It is in no spirit of hostility to social psychology, but in the hope that it may help us to understand its proper place in the study of social institutions that I venture to put forward the method followed in these lectures as one proper to the science of sociology. ”

“ In every philosophical problem, our investigation starts from what may be called “data,” by which I mean matters of common knowledge, vague, complex, inexact, as common knowledge always is, but yet somehow commanding our assent as on the whole and in some interpretation pretty certainly true. In the case of our present problem, the common knowledge involved is of various kinds. There is first our acquaintance with particular objects of daily life—furniture, houses, towns, other people, and so on. ”

“ The first branch of the science ascertains the conditions of stability in the social union; the second, the laws of progress. Social Dynamics is the theory of Society considered in a state of progressive movement; while Social Statics is the theory of the consensus already spoken of as existing among the different parts of the social organism; in other words, the theory of the mutual actions and reactions of contemporaneous social phenomena ”

“ Admitting these observations to be true, there is, nevertheless, a distinction to be drawn between the materials for a history of action and those for one of feeling; between the labors of men aiming at distinction among their fellow-beings, and the private, familiar sentiments that run into the texture of the social system, without remark or the hope of observation. ”

“ We can divide all relations into two classes; first, relations of comparison, which originate at the moment when our perfectly voluntary attention brings any two elements, or rather their mental images, into a contact with each other that is quite indifferent and unessential to the elements themselves. ”

“ Next, as all investigation proceeds from that which is known best to that which is unknown or less well known, and as, in social states, it is the collective phenomenon that is more easy of access to the observer than its parts, therefore we must consider [Pg 373] and pursue all the elements of a given social state together and in common. The social organisation must be viewed and explored as a whole. ”

“ To prescribe for society on the strength of countless unclassified observations, appears to him a sensible course; but, to colligate and systematize the observations so as to educe tendencies of human behavior displayed throughout cases of numerous kinds, to trace these tendencies to their sources in the mental natures of men, and thence to draw conclusions for guidance, appears to him a visionary course. ”

“ This relation, in which the mutual rendering of services is unforced and neither individual subordinated, becomes the predominant relation throughout society, in proportion as the industrial activities predominate. Daily determining the thoughts and sentiments, daily disciplining all in asserting their own claims, while forcing them to recognize the correlative claims of others, it produces social units whose mental structures and habits mould social arrangements into corresponding forms. ”

“ It treats of the relation of social psychology to political science, jurisprudence, economics, history and sociology, analyzing the psychological assumptions underlying the behavior of men living in social relations. ”

“ And if we reflect upon the distinctive form of unity thus exhibited by each department of being—upon the dominant character pervading the differences within it and their cohesion—we may formulate certain 'Axioms', condensing once more into isolated judgements truth for which the evidence is overwhelming. Such 'truths' are stable, not because they, as judgements, hang together of themselves, but because they are but the concentrated expression of a whole of knowledge. ”

“ This divergence, viz., estimate of control by a stranger, now as lighter, now as severer, than control by one who is nearer, has certain utilitarian justifications. The stranger is less partisan, the member of the group is more intelligent about its conditions. ”