Sociologist

“ Until the dream of offering a semester or year of general social science to all freshmen as the introduction to work in the specialized branches of social science comes true, the sociologist must communicate to his elementary classes a sense of the relations between his view of social phenomena and the aspects of the same phenomena which the historian, the economist, the political scientist, and the psychologist handle. ”

“ The modern sociologist, whatever his metaphysical prepossessions, looks at society as a system amenable to direct cause and effect. To a great extent his accurate reckonings serve to give more force and point to the conclusions of rough experience ”

“ Hence, while the sociologist borrows his principles of interpretation from biology and psychology, he has his own distinctive problems, and it is this fact which makes sociology a distinct science.
Sociology is not so easily distinguished from the special social sciences like politics, economics, and others, as it is from the other general sciences. These sciences occupy the same field as sociology, that is, they have to do with social phenomena. ”

“ The problem for the sociologist is as to what produces the average man; the extraordinary men and what they produce may by the philosophers be taken for granted, as too trivial variations to merit deep inquiry. ”

“ The sociologist then limits himself to drawing from these labors and coordinating the most general results. On the one side, social organisms being studied, he has only to classify them and to distinguish the type of each of the groups which they form, according to the complexity of its structure and of its functions. ”

“ Sociology has for one of its aims, perhaps its chief aim, the improvement of the present condition of society. The sociologist is interested in the improvement of social conditions to-day and to-morrow. He wants to improve housing conditions, food and milk supplies, to reduce the curses of alcoholism, poverty, and crime, to take the children out of the factory and their mothers out of the sweatshop and put them into schools or under humane conditions of labor. ”

“ The sociologist must, therefore, look first for the germ which later was differentiated out from society and became the state, and, second, for the stages of growth of this germ and the exact point when it can properly be called the state. He looks not for an ultimate repository of sovereignty which comes into play on occasion, as does the lawyer, but he looks for a constant pervasive psychic influence existing every- where in society and affecting all social relations. He looks, not for an event, but for a "flow." The object which he seeks is dynamic, evolutionary. ”

“ 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. These psychological elements are, however, only concomitants of social processes with which it is possible to deal apart from their psychological aspect. It has been the task of these lectures to refer the social facts of relationship to antecedent social conditions, and I believe that this is the proper method of sociology. ”

“ Hence of these changes he is, for the practical sociologist, not merely the proximate initiator, whose action and peculiarities may be neglected, but a true and primary cause, on which the attention of the sociologist must be concentrated; and just as in action it is impossible to do without him, so in practical reasoning it is impossible to go behind him. ”

“ And, finally, the peculiar position which the sociological observer occupies with reference to the phenomena puts further obstacles in the way of trustworthy observation. The sociologist has to study an aggregate in which he is himself included. He is a member of society and can not wholly free himself from the beliefs and sentiments generated by this connection.
These peculiar difficulties which beset sociology have naturally impeded the development of the department compared with other branches of knowledge. ”

“ It has been my purpose thus far simply to indicate that course and to show what I conceive the science of sociology to be as distinguished from all those special sciences which, indeed, fall within its general purview, but which are entitled to be cultivated, and have been cultivated, as sciences. I have taken economics as an example because it seems to be most prone to overflow into the broader field, and because it is out of this department that sociologists are now being chiefly recruited. ”

“ These two points of departure—the student's interest in his own personality and the community influences that have molded it, and the comparative study of a primitive group—should harmonize the two chief rival views of teaching sociologists; namely, those who urge the approach to sociology through anthropology and those who find the best avenue through the concrete knowledge of the socius. [Pg 252] Moreover, it lays a foundation for a discussion of the antiquity of man, his kinship with other living things, and his evolution; that is, the biological presupposition of human society. ”

“ In this work so much light is shed upon the organism of society, and human nature, and it is so full of civic wisdom, and the whole is expressed in language so brilliant, and at the same time so scientific, that one does not know whether to admire more the philosopher or the jurist, the biologist or the sociologist, the moralist or the litterateur. ”

“ By this he indicates the groups of social phenomena arranged for a scientific study. Once these groups are formed, then, according to the totality of historical facts, the sociologist seeks to determine the continuous growth of each, physical, moral, intellectual or political disposition or faculty, combined with the indefinite decrease of the opposite disposition or faculty: for instance, the tendency of human society to pass from the warlike form to the industrial form, from revealed religion to demonstrated religion, etc. ”

“ In the second place, if a natural philosopher should discuss all the bodies which may fall, he would go entirely astray, and would certainly do no good. The same is true of the sociologist. He must concentrate, not scatter, and study laws, not all conceivable combinations of force which may occur in practice. ”

“ Thus far we have confined ourselves exclusively to the affective side of the mind, or subjective psychology. It is in this region that the motive power of social operations has been found to reside. However trivial the affections may seem to the metaphysician, they are of primary importance to the sociologist. But while they constitute the source of power in social events this is their entire function. They constitute the dynamic agent and nothing else. To render this power effective a directive agent is required. This is furnished by the intellect. ”

“ Seeing that any true definition of sociology as a science is impossible, for it is composed of psychological elements, which are for ever varying, we do not delay to criticize the futile attempts at definition, but pass at once to the objective results attained by the sociologists. ”

“ In other words, history, in any proper sense, demands more than "survey" in Prof. Geddes' sense of the word. It calls to its aid linguistics, criticism, archaeology, jurisprudence, and politics—there must be comparison and criticism as well as "survey." History is the laboratory in which the sociologist sees his social experiments working out their p. 133 results, and history is to the sociologist what experiment is to the physician, or the comparative method to the biologist.
This being so, the scope of "civics" as "applied sociology" is immensely widened. ”

“ So for sociology. Subsequent sociologists may have conceivably to remodel the whole science, yet not the less will they recognize the merit of the first work which has facilitated their labours.”—Congreve. ”

“ This descriptive work being fundamental in all science, and especially since it is the order of the day, whether we will or no, in sociology, our designations ought to correspond with our processes. Tentative interpretation is always in order, but the heaviest constructive work in sociology for a long time to come must necessarily be in accumulation of material. Thus it is perfectly competent for sociologists, if they please, to devote themselves to description and corresponding arrangement of all the forms of human association discoverable in all lands, ages and nations, e. ”

“ Biological Sociologists.—Not a few writers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, before sociology was born, recognized the need and the possibility of a true science of society. Scholars were studying and writing upon other sciences that are related to sociology—biology, history, economics, and politics. Scientific information about the various races of mankind was accumulating. At length Auguste Comte, a Frenchman, found a place for sociology among the sciences and declared it to be the highest of them all. ”

“ Students in the General Sociology for Non-Sociologists class were given the assignment to write about a pressing societal issue in their immediate surroundings as reflected through the lens of common sociological theories. ”

“ Those who determine the conditions of continuance and well-being for a group of associated men, discover how these are helped or hindered by men's actions, and elaborate criteria for judging the various types of conduct. These men are sociologists, cultivating a particular department of their science. ”

“ Sociologists are as a rule interested in past status, not as archaeologists, but as surveyors of preliminaries to social dynamics. The men who have made most strenuous attempts to formulate the social order of past civilizations have had in view the derivation of conclusions not merely about the statics of past times, but about dynamic principles effective in all times. ”

“ Indeed, it appears that they do exactly that and the sociologists have on their hands the job of warning them away from such pernicious activity and wheedling them into more devotion to their families. ”

“ I said to him, "how much real practical sociology we have right here before us—all these men shoveling snow—and how little they realize, most of them, that their work is taking them into sociology at all." ”

“ In point of fact, most of the so-called sociological investigations belong within the field of one of these already existing sciences, for there is no content of life which would not be proper subject-matter of one or other of these. If, therefore, sociology is to have a peculiar and independent significance, its problems must consequently concern, not the contents of social life, but its form—the form which brings it to pass that all those contents which are treated by the special sciences are “societary.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is assisted by those who to-day see instinctively the first tentative effort towards the construction of a sociology—investigation into the lives and wages, social character, beliefs and prejudices of various selected classes and localities. Biography is not without its contribution, especially the biography of typical men—a labour-leader who reveals himself as a conspicuous member of a labouring class at the base, or a politician who voices the scepticisms, manners, fascinations, and prejudices of a cultured, leisured society at the summit of the social order. ”

“ Here a word must be said about the subjective aspect of society, which, in its objective aspect, as we have seen, is merely the struggle and process of adjustment. What is the relation of adjustment to sympathy and to understanding, to communication and to concerted purpose, to the evolution of a social constraint through which the community controls and shapes the individual, to cooperation and to social organization? ”

“ What do these offer to the incipient social worker? The courses in sociology—especially those which thirteen of the schools offer in the history of certain institutions or in race comparisons—give perspective. They show institutions changing in form and function. They show ideas of right changing as the institutions change, temporary institutions conditioning our lives even in the matters a layman supposes instinctive. They force a student to look outside the setting of custom and creed into which, like every other [Pg 53] man, he has been born. ”

“ It is upon this affective part of mind that sociology rests, and not upon its intellectual part. Sociology is a science and as such it deals with a field of phenomena controlled by certain forces. The social forces are human motives, and all motives, in the correct sense of the term have feeling as their end. To attain pleasure or avoid pain is the only incentive to action. All motives are desires, and the term which expresses the aggregate of desires is will. ”

“ It is evident from the introduction to the history of psycho-sociologic thought that has been given in this and the preceding chapter, supported by the materials in the chapters on social conflict and social co-operation concepts, that psycho-sociologic thought holds a place of first rank in the field of422 sociology. It bids fair to become the central force in social thinking and to lead the social sciences. It deals with the most vital social concepts, namely, groups, personality, behavior, conflict, co-operation, and process. ”