Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/536

 powell] SOCIOLOGY, OR THE SCIENCE OF INSTITUTIONS 477

is the science of the control of human activities, not by mechan- ical devices as in mechanics, but by institutional devices. As the order of properties and qualities has already been established, and motion or force found to be third, sociology is consequently third in the demotic sciences.

STATISTICS

Statistics is the science of the enumeration of human beings and the material things which they produce. Here we have to consider what is meant by enumeration or counting. First, counting is determination of kind, then it is the determination of the number of the kind. Classification consists in the determi- nation of the kind and in considering all of that kind in giving it a name ; but enumeration consists in considering that series of a kind which is determined by some human purpose. A con- ventional series is always considered in conventional numbers, while the natural series or class is all of the kind.

Kind and form are concomitant, and thus forms may be counted, but usually such counting would lead to unwieldy, im- practicable, or even inconceivable numbers ; hence representative numbers are devised. The device used in reducing vast numbers to practical numbers is measurement. We do not count the grains of wheat, but we measure them in bushels. We do not count the blades of hay, but we measure hay in tons. We do not count the drops of molecules of wine, but we measure wine in gallons or by some other unit. Thus measurements are adapted to the state in which the article exists, as gaseous, fluid, or solid, and the units for the different states are made commen- surate.

Animals may be counted without measurement, but they also may be measured ; the method of measuring them is by weight. Other methods adopted in statistics for measuring forms is the measurement of spaces ; but in weighing, forces are measured through the medium of gravity. This method of measuring does

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