Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/182

 1 68 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

taken altogether, it will report the social reality, instead of dis- secting lifeless parts abstracted from the reality, may produce many new subdivisions of social science. In this connection, however, the sociologists are merely trying to think out methodically a correlation of labor which the problems for investigation must sooner or later compel scholars to adopt. They are calling upon the scattered forces of social scholarship to multiply their effectiveness by recognizing the economy of appropriate method. The valid methodology of all the inde- pendent social sciences, organized from the point of view here outlined, and reinforced by the study of every actual concrete condition that contains any exhibit of permanent social forms and forces, must constitute that method. In conformity with this method each of the older divisions of research into facts about society not only retains its importance but greatly increases its importance. In isolation, sciences, or divisions of knowledge, or groups of investigations and conclusions, are meaningless. Organized so that each complements the rest they become eloquent. The point of view of the sociologists focalizes all possible researches about social facts into a com- posite picture of the whole reality.

As was said at the beginning, it is not the purpose of this paper to explain the distinctive work of sociologists. We have been dealing with the demands of correct method upon all kinds of scholars who have a part in explaining society. It must not be inferred that the sociologists thus read themselves out of the list of needed students of society, or that they merely give themselves a new name, but are only duplicating the work car- ried on under other names. On the contrary, they insist upon the need of correlating positive investigation of social facts because the problems which they want to study must remain insoluble enigmas until more positive evidence is gathered and organized. From the sociologists' point of view the hardest problems, and the ones closest to human interests, will remain to be solved after all that has been outlined above is realized. In sociology, as in all the physical sciences, there are