Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/148

 136 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

conduct. On the contrary, it is a primary postulate of consciously methodized science that theoretical must precede practical reconstruction.

But the interdependence of social theory and practice does necessitate the classification of the social sciences being treated as a parallel and correlative problem with the classification of the social arts. By " classification " it is here intended to convey no implication as to specific generic and ordinal differentiation, but merely the acquisition of such common understanding of the relation of parts to the whole and of theory to practice as is needed for a working systematization available for the effective co-operation of sociological specialists. In short, the contention is that the main requirement at the present moment, as regards general sociology, is an abstract mapping of the existing field of verified and verifiable sociological knowledge.

What are the resources available for this abstract mapping of the sociological field ? A preliminary question is this : How far does the history of biology afford a suggestive instance of a parallel problem ? The schematization of a large number of practically independent and dispersive specialisms by sub- ordination to a few elemental categories of known relationship has been more or less fully achieved in biology. The value of this systematization in suggesting a parallel schematization and nomenclature of sociological specialisms is, it must be remembered, a totally different problem from that of the traditional " biological analogy." In any case, it is only an item in the enumeration of resources.

These resources, apart from such as are contained within the sociological specialisms themselves, are, in the first instance, those available for the general problem of the classification ('. e., the systematization) of the whole circle of the sciences and the arts. For every science and every art has a threefold social aspect, viz., in respect of (i) historical derivation, (2) practical dependence on co-operative effort, and (3) every science being an integrate, and every art an aggregate, of social experience. The sciences collectively are just that part of social experience which has evolved a conscious need of systematization. But by the great majority of scientists this need has been explicitly felt on aesthetic and economic grounds only. The needed ethic has remained implicit, and can be brought into consciousness, and therefore made scientifically verifiable, only by explicit reference to the arts collectively and in detail. In other words, a con- trolling science of sociology is, as Comte showed, a necessary postulate of science itself.

Traditionally, a problem that has belonged more to philosophy than to science, the classification of the sciences, is thus essentially sociological. But in passing over from philosophy to sociology, the problem of necessity takes on a more specifically historical aspect; for, as an evolutionist, the sociologist treats it not as a mere yystematization of contemporary experience, but as a phase of a continuing process, which has to be carried back as far as historical data reach, and also projected forward into the immediate future. The sociological evolu- tionist is concerned primarily with origins, but ultimately and supremely with ideals ; and through the formulation of its larger generalizations as ideals, sociology may hope to achieve the necessary return from theory to practice. The derived practice asumes, of course, the form of rational art based on applied science, and aims at replacing empirical art based on unanalyzed experience.

The universal interdependence of social phenomena thus imposes on the sociologist, working as he does under the conception of evolution, the threefold task: (i) of constructing a reasoned account of the existing phase of that inter- action of the sciences and of the arts which we call contemporary civilization ; (a) of reconstructing the corresponding phases, which historically have pre- ceded and developed the contemporary phase; and (3) of working out ideals of more ordered development for the future.

If the word " occupation " be taken, not in its economic sense, but as signifying any and every form of human endeavor, past, present, and future, then the most generalized statement of the problem of pure sociology is to describe, to explain, and to forecast the evolution of human occupation. To address himself to this task in part methodological and abstract, in part his-