Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/213

Rh  was (I) that now for the first time it came in the form of a true scientific theory, based on an immense array of accurately observed facts and cautious reasoning. Darwin was a perfect type of a cautious, inductive reasoner. He had collected and observed facts and pondered on them: he had organized and systematized his thoughts and verified his conclusions for twenty years in silence before he published. Nobody who has followed Professor Ward's writings will imagine that he needs to be taught the value of the collector's work. My contention as against him is rather an ad hominem argument. Himself being the judge, the work involved in precise description of fact is important enough to be separately designated. My impression is that in other inductive sciences the disposition to use some designation of this sort—descriptive astronomy, descriptive geology, descriptive botany, descriptive anatomy—has been strongest in the period during which there was the greatest conscious discrepancy between the amount of accurately observed material and the demands of the inductive method. It may be that there will come a time when sociology can dispense with this designation, as some of the other sciences have done. At present men old and young who are dealing with sociology are so unpracticed in the necessary methods, they are so prone to interpret when they have a right only to observe, and they are with such dif^ficulty convinced that the basis of their alleged inductions is insufficient, that the maintenance for technical purposes of the logical division of descriptive sociology is dictated by prudence.

I urge this with the more insistence because it seems to me that even Professor Ward misrepresents the scientific situation. He says (p. 205): "Nearly all the scientific work thus far done in sociology has been in that (the statical) field." I reply that on the contrary it would be difficult to find a piece of thoroughly good inductive statical work upon any considerable section of societary material. There is philosophical speculation in abundance, and there is extremely fragmentary descriptive work, but I have tried in vain to think of a typical piece of statical work on