Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/764

 748 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

total body of ordered knowledge, which we call science. But the event is, in the life-history of the individual scientist, one of most profound significance. It is, if not a turning in his career, yet an experience which will not be without its effect upon his whole future life. As is the way of the older spiritual com- munities, the event here, too, is celebrated by a particular ceremony of initiation. The scientific ritual of initiation has two well-marked stages. The first consists in the contribution of a memoir to the proceedings of the relevant society. The second consists of a copious baptism in the form of a cold-water douche of criticism, from his brother scientists.

XX. If the foregoing analysis has suggested a fanciful analogy between religion and scientific experience, it has entirely failed in its purpose. The intention has been, not to suggest an analogy, but to indicate an essential similarity, indeed a partial identity, of type. In the language, not of psychology, but of sociology, the contention is that the scientific and religious groups are vitally related in their social origins and functions. Addressing an audience of biologists, one would probably convey the intended impression by saying that science and religion are social organs which are in part both homologous and analogous. But the rightly discredited usage of biological terminology in social science prohibits recourse to that language. The argu- ment is that science has its social as well as its logical and psychological aspects, and that, from the former point of view, a scientific society is manifestly to be classed among the social institutions; and that, moreover, in the wide and varied range of social institutions, the place of a scientific society is alongside of the church. The characteristics possessed in common by the religious and scientific community can be traced out in detail. If, for instance, the scientist resorts to a public library to read the journal of his particular society, he is obviously paralleling the tendency of the laxer churchman to escape the monthly col- lection for what in certain nonconformist churches is called the sustentation fund. But minute detail and formal aspect apart, what is it that constitutes the essential similarity of type in the religious and scientific group?