Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/767

Rh most part the scientific training necessary to qualify them for such work, and the only correct method is that of sending out trained observers representing some scientific body, who shall make systematic observations under the guidance of fixed principles, designed to avoid to the utmost the errors into which the casual observer is liable to fall. This method has been adopted for many years by the United States Bureau of Ethnology in the study of the North American Indians, and the numerous able and voluminous reports of that bureau constitute an invaluable resource for the sociologist who aims to found the science upon a broad ethnic basis.

Much has been said of late about the so-called "special social sciences" and their relation to sociology. Some regard sociology as consisting entirely of these sciences and as having no existence apart from them. Others distinguish sociology from the special social sciences, but in different ways. The latter are sometimes identified with "social science," and this is treated as distinct from sociology. There is less variety of opinion relative to the nature of the special social sciences than there is relative to what sociology is if distinguished from these. I have often been asked my opinion on this question, and this seems to be the place to indicate my method of dealing with it.

The special social sciences are numerous, and, in many cases, there is room for differences of opinion as to what constitutes such sciences, but the following are the principal ones about which there is little dispute: ethnography, ethnology, technology, archæology, demography; history, economics, jurisprudence, politics, ethics—all taken in a scientific sense, and with such natural subdivision of each as it admits of. No one of these, nor all of them together, can be said to form sociology, but sociology is the synthesis of them all. It is impossible to perform this synthesis without a clear conception of the elements entering into it. These, therefore, constitute the data for the process. The special social sciences, then, are not themselves the science of sociology, but they constitute the data of sociology.

From all that has been said it follows that sociology proper,