Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/21

 A DECADE OF SOCIOLOGY 5

is doubtful if the record of any science contains a decade of more secure progress in formulating real problems, or in clearing off the methodological dead-work that must in every case be out of the way before close investigation can begin.

It is an open question whether the progress of sociology is not most conspicuous in evident changes of mind and heart among representatives of the older social sciences. Many scholars of the first rank, who would deny that they are so poor as to do reverence to sociology, have given ample unconscious proof that they accept the sociological premises, without having followed them out to inevitable conclusions. The social logic which the sociologists have undertaken to discover has revealed itself to such an extent to many philosophers, historians, and economists, that their ways of stating their own particular conclusions betray essential agreement with the fundamental position of the sociolo- gists. Generalizations upon which the latter are working directly have impressed other scholars indirectly. These are taking the ideas for granted, usually without putting them into definite terms, and without recognizing their necessary implications. The sociologists, on the contrary, are deliberately analyzing these ideas, and following out their pointings, to see what they mean in the way of explaining concrete social conditions.

It is easy therefore today, as it would not have been ten years ago, to make the ad hominem argument convict these scholars of stultifying themselves, if they do not concede that their own reasoning leads to the precise division of labor which the sociolo- gists have undertaken. In other words, a decade ago the sociolo- gists were at best poachers in fields supposed to be fully occupied by scholars of other types. Today the function of sociologists, among the scholars in those fields, is challenged only by those who have stopped short of thinking through the process involved in reaching complete knowledge of human relations.

A single change of perspective between sociology and other divisons of social science deserves specific mention. Ten years ago it was assumed that there was peculiar rivalry between sociology and economics. Today the sociologist or the economist who should betray belief that the two disciplines are really