Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/465

 PURPOSE OF SOCIOLOG Y 4 5 I

fold error is that instead of nature being anthropocentric and science indifferent, nature is indifferent and science is anthropo- centric. It is true that every step in the advance of knowledge has resulted in practical benefit to man morally or materially, and both the philosophic ken and the popular instinct as to the usefulness of knowledge are correct. The knowledge generally understood as scientific is the most useful and practical of all kinds of knowledge. Scientific knowledge is the knowledge of nature, i. e. t of natural things and natural laws. In short it is a knowledge of the environment, and the reason why it is so use- ful is because it is his relations to his environment that man chiefly needs to know.

The environment is not wholly objective, although there is nothing that may not be contemplated objectively. The sub- jective environment is in some respects more important to know than the objective. Notwithstanding the old Greek maxim, 14 Know thyself," it is only in recent times that any adequate idea has been gained of the meaning of that maxim, and although Pope said that "the proper study of mankind is man," still it is only since man began to be studied as a social being and as a being subject to laws as uniform as those that prevail in other departments of nature, that any useful knowledge has been acquired relative to the true nature of man. Man had been supposed to be a "free agent," which meant that there were no laws to which his activities were subject. There could therefore be no science of man, and hence no science of society. Many still so hold, and for such there is no sociology. But those who accept a science of sociology as resting like other sciences on uniform and determinable laws are able to see immense possibilities in this science from a practical point of view. The laws of nature have always proved capable of boiii- turned to man's advantage in proportion as they have been made known, and there is no reason to suppose that those of human nature and of society will form an exception. But it is admitted th.it they are more complex and difficult to understand, and therefore sociology requires more study than any other science.