Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/15

 THE AMERICAN

JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

Volume XV JULY IQOQ Number i

THE VINDICATION OF SOCIOLOGY

ALBION W. SMALL The University of Chicago

Professor Henry Jones Ford of Princeton has lately done sociologists the notable service of advertising to the world how ingeniously sociology may be misunderstood.^ This is by no means the first instance of strange sayings coming out of Prince- ton on this subject, but, in connection with recent occurrences at that venerable seat of learning, one of the effects of this elabo- rate darkening of counsel is reinforced suspicion that sociological obscuration is not only an affliction at Princeton but a policy.

Professor Ford does this Journal the honor of quoting, not without a certain fraction of approbation, the editorial in the first number of the volume just closed.^ He had read the article, therefore, or at least parts of it. His allusions show that he recognized in it a thesis which deserved a certain degree of re- spect. He chooses, however, to ignore the methodological argu- ment, and instead of meeting sociology frankly on that plane, he throws around the situation a dust of incoherence, and irrele- vance and triviality. The article is consequently a curious speci- men of pseudo-scientific muck-raking. Its distortion and dislocation of near-facts into counts against sociology culminate in a permanent contribution to the humor of anti-sociological


 * Cf. The Pretensions of Sociology, below pp. 96 and 105.
 * "The Meaning of Sociology," Am. Jour, of Social., XIV, i.