Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/249

 THE MECHANICS OF SOCIETY 235

themselves, and it is found that only the most general of them all are susceptible of any such treatment. The founder of sociol- ogy, long before he had proposed that name for the science, gave it the name of "Social Physics," which showed that he per- ceived an analogy between social phenomena and physical phe- nomena, and so far as his treatment of the subject is concerned, he might as well have called it social mechanics, for he at once subdivided the phenomena into static and dynamic, terms bor- rowed from the science of mechanics, a branch of pure mathe- matics, and being a mathematician himself, he must have known what the terms meant. All future studies have tended to con- firm the justness and appropriateness of this classification. It is, however, only in their most general aspects that social phe- nomena are capable of being thus treated in the present state of the science, and it is to such general aspects that I propose to confine myself.

The word science has been variously defined. Etymologically it signifies, of course, simply knowledge. But it is admitted that there may be knowledge that is not science, and the most com- mon definition of science is "methodized knowledge." I prefer a somewhat different form of expression, which may not after all differ from this in any fundamental respect. I believe that science is properly confined to an acquaintance with the laws of phenomena, using that expression in the broadest sense. All phenomena take place according to invariable laws whose mani- festations are numerous and manifold. A mere knowledge of these manifestations is not science. Knowledge only becomes scientific when the uniform principle becomes known which will explain all the manifestations. This principle is the law.

Hut we can go a step farther back. A law is only a generali- zation from facts, i. e. t from phenomena, but these do not take place without a cause. The uniformity which makes such a generalization possible is in the cause. But a cause can be nothing else than a force. This f<: upon the material

of phenomena and renders it ,//y\//r///. As all force is per- sistent the phenomena it causes will necessarily be uniform