Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/305

 THE PROBLEM OF SOCIOLOGY 291

of man was science of society. This conception of sociology as science of everything human was supported by the fact that it was a new science, and in consequence all possible problems, which could not find a place elsewhere, crowded to it — as a newly opened territory is always at first the Dorado of the homeless and the unattached. The at first unavoidable indefiniteness and indefensibility of boundaries afford right of asylum to every- body. More closely examined, meanwhile, this throwing to- gether of all previous fields of knowledge begets nothing new ; it merely signifies that all historical, psychological, normative sci- ences are dumped into one great pot, on which we paste the label "Sociology," That would amount merely to the gaining of a new name, while everything which it signifies is already secure in its content and its relationships, or is produced within the previous provinces of investigation. The fact that human thought and action occur in society, and are determined by it, as little makes sociology the all-embracing science of the same, as chemistry, botany, and astronomy can be made contents of psy- chology because their phenomena in the last analysis are actual only in human consciousness, and are subject to the presupposi- tions of the same.^

they are valid ; but a little reflection shows them to be so simbiguous that they might easily be taken by sceptics about sociology as a confession of judgment against it. By the same kind of reasoning we might make havoc of all our valid scientific differentiations. For instance, no matter how many sciences there may be of things which have quantitative relations, we "dump them all into one great pot on which we paste the label" mathematics. In one sense we create nothing new when we generalize all known quantitative relations into an abstract science of quantity. In another sense we do create something entirely new. That is, any conceivable knowledge of the concrete things which have quantita- tive relations would be partial, if these relations had not been made in their turn the object of special attention. Viewing them with primary reference to quanti- tative relations alone, that is, abstracting their quantitative relations for particu- lar investigation, makes of them something entirely new for thought purposes. The same thing happens when we dump everything which may have been mathe- matically classified into another "great pot," and label it physics, or again when we do the same for all things which have the traits that lend themselves to mathematical and physical generalization, and label the next "great pot" chemistry. In other words, it is childish to contend against the elementary knowledge that a shifting of the center of attention reconstructs as much of
 * These are extremely plausible propositions, and there is a sense in which