Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/46

 30 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

blances, differences and changes together with their conditions in the relations that we call causal ; and, second, until we are aware of the tug and trend toward change that is present in even the seemingly inert object, that maintains its static equilibrium, and that again and again bursts into change, and is always ready and waiting for its occasion the streaming of phenomena, the dynamic essence of being.

If we know nothing of forces in and of themselves, and therefore nothing of original causation, so that we cannot char- acterize different processes by declaring them to be the expres- sions of separate and distinct forces, how then can we identify processes on the side of their origin? A review of the scientific meaning of causation has helped us to this answer : A distinct process is the function of a distinct set of conditions. We may give the name "process " to any stable continuation of a phenome- non, or to the maintenance of phenomena of a given class. We do more obviously and universally give the name "process" to any temporal succession of phenomena that are sufficiently con- nected with each other and sufficiently discrete from other phe- nomena. Such a continuation or succession, however discrete and different from other processes, does not imply a peculiar kind of force as its cause, but it does imply a peculiar combination of conditions from which it arises. Where there is a special kind of stream of results issuing from a special confluence of conditions, there may be sought the task of a special science, if the results are sufficiently numerous and interesting to invite study, and the conditions sufficiently obscure and intricate to require it. Thus, for example, the physiological results which the biologist investigates, and which we call the process of life, while they do not necessarily involve the presence of any force that is not present in physical and chemical phenomena, nevertheless do arise out of a peculiarly obscure and intricate combination of physical and chemical conditions; and it is the issuance of this particular kind of process, from its particular set of conditions, which forms the object of the biologist's attention. And such is the task of each one of the established physical sciences. A special kind of phenomena, issuing from its special concurrence