Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/139

Rh while the synthesis itself binds together the elements in new and independent fashion. An example of this sort is social philosophy, as understood by the present writer. We posit the necessity, first of collecting social facts, then of analyzing social facts. As the product of analysis we have the groups of ideas peculiar to vital science, to mental science, to economic science, to political science, to ethical science, and the various subdivisions of each. The first process of social philosophy is a bringing together of these analyzed groups in such fashion as to present a conception of the whole, i. e., human association, a fact having a past, a present, and a future. In this synthetic process we reach the concept social organism, a concept not given by the antecedent analytic process.

Between the two sorts of synthesis, the reproductive and productive, there are many intermediate sorts. These are reinforced especially by the synthetic form of experimental processes. A common illustration of reproductive synthesis is the fusion of H and O into water, by the passage of the electric spark. The result is a synthetic and experimental demonstration of the chemical composition of water.

Again, after analysis of sound has distinguished component sounds, experimental synthesis produces those sounds simultaneously, in order to see whether they actually compose themselves into the complex sound first analyzed. So of light, etc. But the more creative process of experimental productive synthesis is suggested by these primary processes. E. g., instead of taking all the components found by analysis to be in sunlight, the investigator puts two or more colors together to determine the product of them by synthesis. A special form of synthesis is that which selects from the data of antecedent analysis merely the elements, with which the process of building up is maintained. Geometry is the best illustration. The elements with which it is concerned are the point, the line, and the plane. With these construction is carried on, and this term is best for the process. The productive character of construction in this sense is evident. The analysis which reached these simple elements was of a very primary order. It by no means gave, prima facie, as its correlates, the numberless forms and relations in two or three dimensions in which these elements may be combined. The analysis, in other words, does not of itself foreshadow what will be constructed by subsequent synthesis.

The sociologist is consequently bound to understand the traps and snares for the mind throughout its process of building up ideas. We are not only in a world of composite realities, but all our thoughts about the world are composite. They are syntheses of syntheses of syntheses, up to the nth power. These thoughts, however, form the material upon which the sociologist is employed, the tools with which he works. He is at the mercy of any false synthesis that may have occurred anywhere in the long process of building up current social ideas. Thus the elementary ideas of the sociologist, e. g., rights, duties, obligations, liberty, individuality, equality,