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An overview of the principal systems of sociology, identifying key ideas, concepts, and leading figures in the field. It discusses various approaches to sociology, including social work, political economy, and the philosophy of history. The document also touches upon the distinction between sociology as a distinct science and its relationship to other social sciences.
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from: The American Journal of Sociology (Chicago) (Vol. 7, No. 4. (Jan., 1902), pp. 475-500; Vol. 7, No. 5. (Mar., 1902), pp. 629-658; Vol. 7, No. 6. (May, 1902), pp. 749-762.)
Also reprinted as Brochure (Chicago, 1902, pp. 70.)
When a philosopher has once laid hold of a favorite principle, which perhaps accounts for many natural effects, he extends the same principle over the whole creation, and reduces to it every phenomenon, though by the most violent and absurd reasoning. - HUME, “The Sceptic,” Works , Vol. III (1826), p. 180.
To give anything approaching an adequate account of contemporary sociology would be a difficult task. Just at present we are in that initial stage of the science in which a great army of really honest and earnest workers is wholly without organization - an army, it might be called, all the members of which are officers having the same rank, and none subject to the orders of any other. Each one is pursuing the one particular line that he has chosen. Nearly everyone has some one single thought, which he believes to embrace, when seen as he sees it, the whole field of sociology, and he is elaborating that idea to the utmost. Now, it is clear that he will make much more of that idea than anyone else could make. He will get all the truth out of it that it contains. It is true that he will carry it too far and weight it down with implications that it will not bear, but these are, like the errors of all scientific investigators, subject to universal criticism and ultimate rejection by putting the real truth in their place. The notion has always been prevalent that men of one idea are useless, or worse than useless. The fact is that they are the most useful of all men. I do not refer to such as are afflicted with the pathologic idée fixe , but to those who are, as it were, possessed and consumed by some single thought, some favorite hypothesis, some heuristic conception, which grows larger and more all- comprehensive, until it impels them to pursue it untiringly to its last logical conclusion and to work into it great fields of truth that no name that can be given it would even suggest to anyone else. Work done under such an inspiration is thoroughly done. The analysis is exhaustive, and it never fails, notwithstanding the necessary error and exaggeration, to
immediate reform of social evils, and which is characterized by warmth of sentiment, usually accompanied by personal vituperation. A distinction is also to be made between an - ism and an - ology. I do not, for example, question the legitimacy of socialism as a subject for study and a field of labor, but it relates to action and implies a purpose, which excludes it at least from any pure^ science. Its relations to applied sociology need not be discussed here. In the following enumeration of the principal systems of sociology I shall endeavor to find some single word or expression for each of the leading ideas, conceptions, doctrines, subjects, or groups of social facts characterizing them, which must sometimes be taken in a somewhat broader sense than the one that is current for the term, but with such explanations as I shall make I do not think that any confusion or misunderstanding is likely to arise.
It is probably safe to say that this conception of sociology is the prevailing one with the public today. The word now frequently occurs in the newspapers, but always in this sense. More than nine-tenths of the papers that are read before the American Social Science Association proceed from that idea of social science. It is the housing of the poor, charity work generally, slumming, reform work in the neglected quarters of cities, settlement work, etc. Sometimes it gets beyond the tenement house and sweating system and deals with consumers' leagues and co-operative stores. It includes such municipal reforms as public baths and lavatories, and the placing of public parks, gardens, and art galleries within the reach of the less well-to-do classes. This cannot be called a system of sociology, and it has no one leading advocate or exponent, but it is the common notion of what sociology or social science is, and is all the idea that the general public, the newspaper reporter or editor, or the average member of Parliament or of Congress has of it. Of course, it is not science at all, and therefore it cannot be
sociology at all. No one will, however, be so illogical as to construe this into condemning it. It is social work, often of a high order, and for the most part very useful, but it is not sociology. Nor need it be denied that there are aspects of philanthropy that may and should be made scientific. Such are all attempts to grasp those principles of human nature which lead to methods of dealing with the poor and the unfortunate that will permanently elevate them and not make parasitic degenerates of them nor bring about the survival of the unfit. Such was most of the work of Professor Amos G. Warner. We may therefore heartily indorse the words of another professional philanthropist when he says:
I plead, therefore, here as everywhere wherever chance gives me opportunity, for a more intimate association and fellowship between professional sociologists and professional philanthropists. I deplore the sociological teaching which is fragmentary, disjointed, a mere mosaic of quotations from the reports of actual observers of human life in its various aspects, arranged without regard to proportion or perspective, and which produces the effect upon the mind of a Chinese painting resembling nothing in heaven or earth.(1*)
Among scientific men by far the most common conception of sociology is one that is essentially anthropological. The moment the subject of human society is presented, it brings up the wider conception of man as the being whose association constitutes it, and with the natural scientific habit of looking for the origin and development of things, attention is at once turned to primitive, uncivilized, barbaric, and savage man, and this field proves so large and so attractive that it holds the attention. It cannot be denied that anthropology, as the science of man, has as one of its departments the laws and forms of human association, and from this point of view sociology is a branch of anthropology. But there is another point of view which treats sociology as an abstract science and not as a branch of zoölogy, and thus viewed it stands as one of the great co-ordinate independent sciences alongside of biology, chemistry, and physics. Most
form a kingdom apart, not yet recognized by the books? Another question that troubles the specialists in biology is whether this organism is to be regarded as a species, a genus, a family, or some higher classificatory group. If a species, to what genus does it belong? If a genus, to what family, etc.? There are as many questions of this kind as there are classificatory groups, until we reach the primary subdivision of nature into kingdoms, and we have seen that even here the same question still confronts us, and, so far as I am aware, no one has attempted to answer any of these questions. Notwithstanding these difficulties that confront the biological specialist (and I know of no "organicist" who is such), the analogy possesses such a charm that it fascinates a large number of able and vigorous investigators, and they have pursued it, one would suppose, to its utmost limits. The passion for analogies has been at once one of the most powerful stimuli to research and one of the greatest sources of error in the history of science. It arises from the great strength which the faculty of causality acquired in the human mind at a very early period in its development. This faculty is the basis of all the early world-views of the race, and underlies all anthropomorphic conceptions. It is its action that is referred to when we hear it said that religion and science start from the same point and have essentially the same object, viz., to explain the universe. But we most carefully distinguish between causality and ability to perceive causal connections. The idea of natural causation and the faculty by which it is cognized us of comparatively recent date and are developed only in relatively few minds. The old philosophers called this faculty the ratio sufficiens , and the German metaphysicians translate this into their Satz vom zureichenden Grunde , or simply Satz vom Grunde. Causality is rather the sense of a need for some explanation in terms of a cause, and the question of its sufficiency or adequacy is usually left quite out of view. Everything combines to show that the world has always been just as well satisfied with an inadequate as with an adequate explanation. If it only gives some explanation, the mind is at rest. The wildest magic completely satisfied, not only the Orient, but
the unscientific part of the Occident, and, as a matter of fact, the great majority of those who inhabit the most enlightened countries have a very imperfect idea of the relations between causes and effects. The serious alarm of the Pai-Ute Indians in 1875, at my suggestion to throw a cap-box full of ground cedar berries into Fish Lake, in Utah, lest it might poison the whole lake and kill them all, is closely paralleled by the fright that seizes the average civilized woman at the sight of the outside of a bottle marked Poison! over the cross bones. Now, the love of analogy is based on the innate craving for an explanation of phenomena, unaccompanied for the most part, as in the case of magic and anthropomorphic ideas, by any strong demand that the explanation be adequate and the cause a sufficient one. This it is which vitiates so much of the reasoning of ethnographers relative to similar conditions found in widely separated regions, as in the Old and New Worlds, and leads to false theories of derivation of customs by one people from another. The Pythagoreans, who studied musical tones in stringed and wind instruments, and who also studied the heavenly bodies, saw an analogy between them, and taught the "music of the spheres." This music, they said, would be perceptible to the human ear if it were not perpetual and constantly heard from infancy through life, while we can be conscious only of sounds in which there is an interchange between sound and silence.(1) Not to be confounded with this, but equally mythical and mystical, is Schopenhauer's fanciful analogy between musical tones and the various "objectivations of the will," according to which the bass notes represent the earth and planets and inorganic matter generally, while the higher ascending tones typify the dawn and progress of life, feeling, and thought.(2) Sacred numbers are familiar to all, being found connected with nearly all great religious and philosophic systems. The number seven is by far the most common, and many attempts to explain it have been made. The last, and perhaps the best, derives it from the
Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his Social Statics , published in 1850, says:
We commonly enough compare a nation to a living organism. We speak of “the body politic,” of the functions of its parts, of its growth, and of its diseases, as though it were a creature. But we usually employ these expressions as metaphors, little suspecting how close is the analogy, and how far it will bear carrying out. So completely, however, is a society organized on the same system as an individual being, that we may perceive something more than analogy between them.
He then proceeds to give certain examples, and adds:
Hence we are warranted in considering the body as a commonwealth of monads, each of which has independent powers of life, growth, and reproduction; each of which unites with a number of others to perform some function needful for supporting itself and all the rest; and each of which absorbs its share of nutriment from the blood. And when thus regarded, the analogy between an individual being and a human society, in which each man, while helping to subserve some public want, absorbs a portion of the circulating stock of commodities brought to his door, is palpable enough.(1*)
The exhaustive treatment which Mr. Spencer subsequently gave the subject is well known,(2) yet, after Professor Huxley had so clearly shown in his “Administrative Nihilism "(3) that the doctrine necessarily leads to the most extreme form of socialism, he qualified it to such an extent that he is scarcely claimed by the organicists as a member of that school. Bluntschli(4) is usually cited as one of the pioneers, though it is mainly the state with which he is dealing; but the works of Lilienfeld(5) and Schaeffle(6*) are the fundamental contributions upon which the doctrine rests. Its two other principal contemporary defenders and M. Jacques Novicow and M. René Worms. It is to be classed along with the idea that has often been put
forth that the earth is an organism or great animal,(1) the notion of Wilhelm Humboldt that language is an organism,(2) and the fancies of Fourier, who saw living beings in the stars and planets, and even in the constellations. It is remarkable how far it is possible to carry such a theory when a large number of acute minds are fixed upon it for a considerable time. In the following enumeration of some of the leading specific analogies that have been pointed out I make no apology for their lack of harmony, but simply give them as I find them. I omit the fanciful analogies of Hobbes and other early writers, and limit the enumeration to such as have been more or less seriously proposed by modern sociologists.
The social unit or cell ist the individual. (Spencer, Lilienfeld, etc.) The social unit is the family. (Comte, Schaeffle.) The social unit is the clan. The family is a social molecule. Individuals are social atoms. (Ludwig Stein, Ratzenhofer.) [The last two analogies go back to physics. It is somewhat surprising that no one seems to have thought of comparing men to sperm cells and women to germ cells. The married or propagating couple would then correspond to the fertilized ovum or blastosphere.] The gens represents a segment of segmented animals ( Annelidœ ). (Durkheim.) The lower (mechanical) societies represent the segmented type of animals; higher types take on the structure of the arthropods. (Durkheim.) Social tissues are settlements, roads, buildings, etc. (locative); facilities of exchange, commerce, trade, production (commercial); civil and military appliances and technique (administrative). (De Greef.) Social tissues consist of the simpler voluntary organizations of society. (Lilienfeld.)
The state is the central organ (brain?) of society. (Lilienfeld.) Government is the homologue of the brain. (This view is held with qualifications by the majority of organicists.) The nervous system corresponds to the political power variously expressed. This qualification of the last- mentioned analogy admits the comparison of all grades of societies with all stages of animal development. Fully worked out by Spencer. Subordinate governments, as of provinces, departments (in France), states (of the United States), countries, municipalities, etc., represent the hierarchy of ganglia of the developed nervous system. (Spencer, who calls special attention to the representative character of both.) Society itself represents a brain (organ) rather than an organism,^ and the individual brains of men constitute its cells. (Tarde, Logique sociale , p. 127.) The brain of the social organism consists of the élite of mankind. (Novicow, who totally rejects the doctrine that government is the homologue of the brain.) The sympathetic nervous system of society is that which controls the material and physical phenomena (production, consumption, reproduction), while the cerebro-spinal system regulates the more spiritual phenomena, such as beliefs, customs, arts, etc. (De Greef.) Voluntary contract represents the sympathetic system, while the state corresponds to the cerebro-spinal system of society. (Durkheim.) Trades unions and guilds are the ganglia of the sympathetic nervous system of society. (Durkheim.) Telegraph wires correspond the nerve fibers. (Spencer.) [Lilienfeld denies that organicists have defended this analogy, and in his system they belong to the intercellular substance, but a passage on p. 102 of his Pathologie sociale has been construed to harmonize with the Spencerian doctrine.] Government is the homologue of the soul or consciousness, the formal unity or ego. (Bernès.) Government represents the conscious will. (Spencer, Tarde.) History is social memory. (Garofalo.) Military societies represent the Carnivora or predatory animals generally; industrial societies represent the Ungulata and other herbivorous and frugivorous animals. (Fouillée.)
It is, of course, obvious to anyone who has followed the literature of this subject that the above list by no means exhausts the stock of specific analogies that have been pointed out between society and an organism. It may be regarded as embracing a few samples that are fairly representative of the whole.
The term analogy^ is constantly used for these parallels, but no one, not even Spencer, has pretended that it is taken in the biological sense. Analogous organs in biology are those that perform a like function , but are constructed on an entirely different plan. For example, the eyes of mollusks and of vertebrates, though serving for the same purpose, are altogether different structures; the wings of insects, of bats, and of birds, all enable their possessors to fly, but all three are distinct organs anatomically; the proboscis of a hawk-moth greatly resembles the long beak of some humming birds, and both are used to penetrate tubular flowers, but, of course, they have no structural resemblance; the horseshoe crab chews with its legs, and the various sexual calls of insects (crickets, cicadas, grasshoppers, etc.), corresponding in purpose to the notes of birds, are made by various parts of the body, but not in the mouth or throat; the termites or white ants (Neuroptera) have neutral workers like true ants (Hymenoptera), but they are not functionless females, and seem to have been produced by like social necessities. The structures and functions of society that are compared with those of organisms stand in no such relation as this. There is no principle or plan of construction which admits of comparison. The functions performed or purpose subserved is somewhat similar, and this is all that can be said. It only proves that in all departments of nature there is a cosmic law that works similar results. Still less do these "analogies" possess the character of biological homologies. These are cases in which the same structure produces a different organ, the reverse of analogies. For example, the fin rays of fishes are the same structures as the fingers and toes of men, and the digits generally of the higher vertebrates, and the latter are the homologues of the former. But not only is there a transition form among living and fossil animals, viz., the Dipneustra, in which the number of digits is much greater than in the Amphibians, where it became fixed at five, but there is a corresponding embryonic stage in the ontogeny of all the higher vertebrates, including man, at which the phylogenetic record of a many-toed ancestry is preserved. The
nervous system. In other words, the chief and only useful analogies are not properly biological, but psychological. This is because the same psychic qualities that belong to the animal organism are at work in society through the co-operation of its organic units, the minds of men. But although the mind of man is more highly organized than that of lower animals, so that individual men move on a higher psychic plane than individual animals, still the spontaneous activities generated in human society by the interaction of the psychic units in the resultant so-called social consciousness do not, as a matter of act, produce a co-ordinating system of a high order, nothing approaching the perfect adjustment and subordination of the parts to the whole that we see in any of the developed animal organisms. To find any kind of parallel we are obliged to go down among the lowest organic forms, to the state known as the cormus. Here we find every degree of co-ordination, from the simple colony held together by invisible lines along which the internuncial currents are vaguely propagated, to mere chains of cells with something corresponding to nerves connecting them, and thence on to the earliest segmented organisms. No one can have failed to notice that it is chiefly with such primitive creatures that Mr. Spencer makes his comparisons. He was so much impressed with this necessity that he was finally forced by his critics to say in a footnote that his comparisons were general, and that "if any specific comparison were made, which it cannot rationally be, it would be to some much lower vertebrate form than the human."(1) It is a matter of common observation that the deliberations of public bodies of men are not marked by the degree of good sense and judgment that characterizes the best minds that compose them. Indeed, they all below the average intelligence of the members, and probably below that of the least intelligent individuals in such bodies. Spencer remarks that "not only is the corporate conscience lower than the average individual conscience, but the corporate intelligence too."(2) Gabelli has reduced this to the formula that "the faculties of men working
together obliterate each other and are not added together."(1*) Novicow admits that human societies should not be compared with animals as highly differentiated as the higher vertebrates, but with representatives of the Tunicata (barnacles), for example. This, of course, rather supports than opposes his favorite theory that the élite constitute the social consciousness, but that theory has the fatal objection that it leaves society without any central organ of control at all, for whatever may be the moral influence of the élite, it possesses no authority, and purposely keeps aloof from all interference with social events. It is wholly unorganized, and really exerts less power in society than is exercised by unorganized crowds and mobs. These latter, as everybody knows, display the minimum intelligence, and represent the non-rational, animal state, where feeling reigns supreme. We must therefore fall back upon the prevalent view that government or the state is the homologue of the brain and ganglionic hierarchy in the developed animal, and here, it must be confessed, there is a general parallel and quite an array of special parallels. The difficulty with it is that, as already remarked, and as has been perceived by a score of writers, neither the degree of differentiation nor of integration is equal to that of any such animals. We may perhaps be thankful that it is not, for anything approaching it would realize the wildest socialistic dreams. Dr. Pioger, who is not at all frightened at this prospect, says:
It is not because societies do not constitute living organisms that they resemble those exoduses so little, but because at present they are only in a lower stage of their development, and because, if we wished to compare them at all to living organisms, we should do so, not with the higher animals, but with the lower organisms called polyzoans, in which physiological individualization is still imperfect.(2*)
Huxley's celebrated remark on this point in his address before the Midland Institute on October 9,1871, and published in the
have been made against the organic theory may also be regarded as well taken:
concrete object. It is an abstract conception. Nothing but the individual is concrete. A species is not a material thing. A genus is only a mental conception. The social-organism theory is a sort of modern revival of the old scholastic realism. The truth is that society is a relation, but when we examine all forms of truth we shall find that most of it is of this class, and also that relations are the most important of all things.
So large a part of social phenomena relates to material things that many economists decline to recognize sociology as a science distinct from economics. Of this class we need not speak. There is, however, another class of economists who clearly see that economics are commonly taught fails to include large fields of phenomena that are of the highest importance, especially phenomena relating to population in a broader sense than that usually given to the science of demography. These economists would enlarge the scope of economics to embrace these fields. This department they often designate as social economics or social economy. This latter expression was used by John Stuart Mill when he was trying to find a name for a great science which he clearly saw to exist, distinct from political economy.(1*) He then said: "This science stands in the same relation to the social as anatomy and physiology to the physical body." The organicists have never, to my knowledge, made any use, as they might have done, of this significant passage, but it is broad enough to serve equally well in characterizing society as an organized body or social organization. But Mill was specially concerned in distinguishing his new-found science from political economy, and he proceeded to do so in a clearly worded paragraph. The germ of this distinction was contained in a passage of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations where he says that "the interest of the dealers in any particular branch of trade or manufacture is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to,
