Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/294

 282 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

science, or upon precise description of their task, has seemed to afford ocular proof that their alleged science was merely a name with no corresponding content. 2

Has sociology a material of its own ? Jealous friends of the older sciences promptly answer " No ! " Friends of the new science as confidently answer " Yes," but they have not always been able to justify the answer to each other or even to themselves.

The formula adopted above is not an individual variation of the many alternatives already proposed as a fair field for a science of sociology. It is rather an interpretation of all the efforts, both within and without the older sciences, which have been prompted by a more or less distinct feeling that there are important reaches of knowledge about human conditions not provided for in the programs of the older sciences. Instead of leading to the conclu- sion that there is nothing to do which the older sciences do not properly attempt, if the heterogeneous labors of the sociologists are reviewed with a little care they furnish abundant evidence, both that there is unoccupied territory, and that these unsys- tematized surveys have each actually been doing some of the necessary work of plotting the ground. The proposition which we are now supporting is not that the sociologists ought to fix upon a new material as the subject-matter of their science. In fact, the sociologists have long ago instinctively fixed upon their material, and its distinctive character is gradually beginning to appear. The subject-matter upon which the sociologists are engaged is the social process as a whole. This is to be sharply distinguished, on the one hand, from mere knowledge of isolated phenomena, or classes of phenomena, that take place among men ; and it is also to be distinguished from mere knowledge of imme- diate relations, that may be abstracted from the whole complex of relations which make up the entire fabric of human life. The

two papers by Mr. Victor Branford and Professor Durkheim on " The Relation of Sociology to the Social Sciences and to Philosophy " (vide AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY, Vol. X, pp. 134 ff. and 256 ff.). The differences of opinion and vagueness of view betrayed in the discussion fairly reflect the prevailing state of mind as to the subject-matter of sociology, even among persons who have given more than casual attention to recent sociological literature.
 * The most recent betrayal of this judgment may be seen in a discussion of