Social sciences

“ Philosophy of history is cultivated by all nations; history, economics, and all social sciences flourish; sociology is crystallised as a resultant of all these specialised attempts and seeks to become the general science of human society and its development. ”

“ This is not the case, however, with the social sciences. One cannot but feel a little queasy when he uses the expression "social science", because it seems as if we had not as yet got anywhere near a real science of man. ”

“ Perhaps we shall ultimately call history in the scientific sense "sociology," putting it, as Comte and Spencer do, at the head of all the sciences, or perhaps we may make of it a philosophy of society, dealing with universal laws and universal types, for which history, its chief adjunct, will furnish the data; or we may regard sociology in a way similar to the popular conception of it at present, as the science which deals with social problems. ”

“ The present sociological movement stands for all this and more, when it is considered in relation to the church. Its science of sociology, however, is rapidly formulating the data and province of that branch of scientific research which is strictly limited to the study of society as a whole, and the social sciences are laying the basis for the practical arts of living and working together within the specific classes and conditions to which the several social structures give rise. ”

“ The more so is this true in the pursuit of understanding in the groping endeavors of what are called the social sciences, the concern of which is man and society. The problems that are the respective preoccupations of anthropology, economics, law, psychology, sociology and related areas of scholarship are merely departmentalized dealing, by way of manageable division of analysis, with interpenetrating aspects of holistic perplexities. ”

“ Relations of Sociology and Other Social Sciences.—There are many phases of human experience and differences of relationship. Obviously the specific sciences that deal with them have a still closer relation to sociology. Economics, for example, has as its field the economic relations and activities that are connected with the business of making a living. ”

“ Moreover, training in the social sciences will check many of the most menacing tendencies of our present civilization. For one thing, training in the social sciences will lessen the practical materialism of modern civilization, for it will throw the emphasis on the relations of men to one another rather than on the relations of man to nature. ”

“ The subject-matter of sociology is, therefore, the forms or ways in which human beings exist beside, for, and with each other. The purposes for the sake of which these socializations come into being—economic and social, [2] religious and criminal, sexual and military, political and ethical, etc.—will be treated by other sciences. ”

“ We have now acquired the method of studying sociology scientifically so as to attain to assured results. We have acquired it none too soon. The need for a science of life in society is urgent, and it is increasing every year. It is a fact which is generally overlooked that the great advance in the sciences and the arts which has taken place during the last century is producing social consequences and giving rise to social problems. ”

“ This is only saying practically the same thing as was said above when we pointed out that industry, government, and religion are but expressions of human social life. In other words, sociology deals with the more general biological and psychological aspects of human association, while the special sciences of economics, politics, and the like, generally deal with certain products or highly specialized phases of society. ”

“ For, as it seems to me, all that general sociology can do is to furnish the more ordinary and universal inferences concerning the life of communities; and upon this canvas the several sciences of sociology are delineated by the specialised observation of each

distinct order of social facts. ”

“ We have many studies of vast interest to society which are properly economical, administrative, or educational. A problem in social technology has at least these marks ; all the elements of welfare are involved ; all the members of the community are affected; and the data to be used are normally derived from more special sciences. If the answer can be supplied by an expert in any particular field of science or experience, the problem may be left there. ”

“ It gives a survey of sociological development so that the student may have in fairly brief compass a general view of its rise and its relations to other sciences, a sketch of the development of social institutions, and a short discussion of social problems and of the factors to be considered in social progress. Its contents fall into three parts: Sociology and its kindred sciences; Society and its institutions ”

“ Yet I think that the two sciences may be conveniently distinguished, and that while the name of Sociology should be reserved for the study of human society in the most comprehensive sense of the words, the name of Social Anthropology may with advantage be restricted to one particular department of that immense field of knowledge. ”

“ The scientific movement has even more points in common with the sociological. In its opposition to the disciplinarians and its stress upon content rather than form, the scientific tendency coincides with the sociological, although the former looks rather to the natural Means of human welfare. sciences as a means of individual welfare, and the latter to the social and political sciences to equip the individual for life in social institutions and to secure the progress of society. ”

“ In a broad view, sociology includes politics, economics and ideology. For the purposes of our social analysis, we have divided the field into four separate categories, beginning with politics, continuing through economics and drawing our study together under the general headings of sociology and ideology.
No civilization that we have studied can be regarded as an intentional or projected or planned enterprise. ”

“ It will not be many years hence until the science of society will be a recognized branch of every child’s education in the most enlightened portions of the world. Political economy, which is a branch of social science, is regarded with favor by many now, and, comprehensively speaking, all these questions which have been looked upon as “too abstract” for common comprehension, are found to be the real principles which underlie all social strictures. ”

“ For, the "social science" taught in our schools is, it would appear, an orderly presentation of the conventional proprieties, rather than a summons to grapple with the novel and disconcerting facts that surround us on every side. ”

“ This branch of science, whether we prefer to call it social economy, speculative politics, or the natural history of society, presupposes the whole science of the nature of the individual mind; since all the laws of which the latter science takes cognizance are brought into play in a state of society, and the truths of the social science are but statements of the manner in which those simple laws take effect in complicated circumstances. Pure mental philosophy, therefore, is an essential part, or preliminary, of political philosophy. ”

“ So long as government and law provide for the security and well-being of men in their common life, the arts, literature and the sciences, less despotic though perhaps more powerful, fling garlands of flowers over the chains which weigh them down. ”

“ Such studies as history, government, economics, ethics, and sociology must occupy a larger and larger place in the education of the future if we are to secure a humanity adjusted to the requirements of its existence. ”

“ Thus conceiving the scope of the science, we saw, on comparing rudimentary societies with one another, and with societies in different stages of progress, that they do present certain common traits of structure and of function, as well as certain common traits of development. Further comparisons, similarly made, opened large questions, such as that of the relation between social growth and organization, which form parts of this same science—questions of transcendent importance, compared with those occupying the minds of politicians and writers of history. ”

“ Studies that throw light on the nature and working of society, past or present, and upon the opportunities of service or distinction which it offers to the individual, are rapidly taking the place, for purposes of culture, of studies whose human value is less, or not so apparent. Classes in history—political, industrial and social—in economics, in government and administration, in sociology and ethics, in charities and penology, are larger year by year. ”

“ The current assertion, that sociology is not possible, implies a misconception of its nature. Using the analogy supplied by a human life, we saw that just as bodily development, and structure, and function, furnish subject-matter for biological science, though the events set forth by the biographer go beyond its range, so, social growth, and the rise of structures and functions accompanying it, furnish subject-matter for a science of society, though the facts with which historians fill their pages mostly yield no material for science. ”

“ The gradation in the changes that mark the social man justifies a corresponding gradation in the traits that distinguish the social aggregate from other aggregates.
The organic concept of society has taught us to look upon mutual aid, division of labor, formation of industrial groups, specialization and exchange with its facilities for communicating and transporting, as the underlying features of society, corresponding to the growing unlikeness of organs and functions, interdependence of parts and unity seen in living bodies. ”

“ Another hypothetical or abstract science, which can be carved out of Sociology, is the as yet unexplored Political Ethology, i.e. the theory of the causes which determine a people's, or age's, type of character, which collective character, besides being the most interesting phenomenon in the particular state of society, is the main cause of the social state which follows, and moulds entirely customs and laws. ”

“ Our age presents us the incredible spectacle that the dependence of the higher social culture on the economic development is not only clearly recognized by social science, but is proclaimed as the ideal. ”

“ Assuming that the proper aim of sociology is the investigation of the natural laws regulating the connections between individuals and society, it is obvious that, before we approach sociological studies themselves, we must answer the preliminary question, Which of the various degrees of individuality above mentioned we accept as the starting-point of our researches; or, in other terms, where ought the domain of social science properly to begin? ”

“ It has, therefore, been to lay the broadest possible basis of evolutionary science, of geographic and historic fact, for what would otherwise be open to ridicule as a Utopian hope, that of Civics as Applied Social Art, that I have insisted at such length above upon Civics as Applied Social Science. ”

“ In order to conceive correctly the scope of this general science, and distinguish it from the subordinate departments of sociological speculation, it is necessary to fix the ideas attached to the phrase, “A State of Society.” What is called a state of society, is the simultaneous state of all the greater social facts or phenomena. ”

“ Even at the present time, however, it is possible to support sociological arguments by means of considerations provided by psychological motives, and the assistance thus rendered to sociology will become far greater as the science of social psychology advances. ”

“ The data of sociology in the primitive conditions which initiated the lowest social state constitute, therefore, the essential basis of the science, and determine the whole course of subsequent elucidation. ”

“ On the other hand, if laws of social phaenomena, empirically generalized from history, can when once suggested be affiliated to the known laws of human nature; if the direction actually taken by the developments and changes of human society, can be seen to be such as the properties of man and of his dwelling-place made antecedently probable, the empirical generalizations are raised into positive laws, and Sociology becomes a science. ”

“ Within the past two centuries a flood of books and pamphlets has appeared dealing with social organization. To be sure, most of these publications have been of a political nature, but the effort was made none the less to understand society and its workings. The investigations, analyses, comparisons and conclusions are formulating themselves gradually into certain well-defined social laws, which men recognize as essential factors in social thinking. ”

“ If their ultimate aim is to frame a science of economics which shall be part of the science—not yet constituted—of sociology, then I should say that what they have really done—so far as they have reasoned accurately—has been to frame an essential part of the prolegomena to such a science. ”

“ And in like manner, before there can be reached in Sociology, gen­er­al­i­za­tions having a certainty making them worthy to be called scientific, there must be definite accounts of the institutions and actions of societies of various types, and in various stages of evolution, so arranged as to furnish the means of readily ascertaining what social phenomena are habitually associated. ”