Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/17

 THE VINDICATION OF SOCIOLOGY -3

that we have been passing from a static into a dynamic world; from a world of assorted things to a world of developing pro- cesses. Referring particularly to the English-speaking countries, our social sciences and the popular opinions which partly echo and are partly echoed by these sciences are in the last analysis still dominated by the statical conception. They are accordingly provincial, esoteric, and lifeless.

It requires no wide observation or reading to collect abun- dant material for smart gibes at sociologists. It demands more reflection than the gibers are prepared to perform to discover that these same pert witticisms do more to impeach the scientific seriousness of the jesters than to discredit the real workers. In- quirers who are both candid and competent begin by distinguish- ing the latter from the rabble of parasites upon responsible soci- ology. Even without technical acquaintance with sociology, scholars ought to be able, on fairly familiar general principles, to distinguish the serious investigator from the desultory talker.

There are more pharmaceutical, as there are more sociological, proprietar)'^ medicine exploiters than there are biological and sociological explorers. No academic man would go into print with an array of the sins of medical quacks, nor even of the disputes between investigators in the course of threshing out their results, as proof that there is no science in biology. To the men who understand what the sociologists are about, one simply exhibits quite as naive limitations who draws from the equally irrelevant social quacks and equally incidental disagreements of sociological scholars, the conclusion that there is nothing scientific in sociology. To confuse either biological or socio- logical investigators with the sorts of adventurers who counter- feit them is catchy in the clown or the yellow-journal para- grapher, but it is pitiable in a professed spokesman for science.

In this time of uncompleted transition from categorical to evolutionary thinking, a few men who, in talent, in training, and in learning, are at least the peers of the satisfied traditionalists in the conventional sciences, have felt, more than they could at once formulate, the needs of modifications in our methodology of investigating and interpreting human experience. These men