Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/149

 METHODOLOGY OF THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 133

etc. ; but no special search-science generalizes these results so as to answer our question."

Whether students of society like it or not, all researches about society actually converge toward answer to this question ; and, conversely, there can be no answer to the question unless it is constructed by combining and generalizing the fragments of the answers which are furnished by the special social sciences. Thus ethnography is either a collection of curios, good for nothing but amusement, or it is the raw material of ethnology, which tries to answer more or less of our general question. The same is true of history, economics, etc.

I get my own view of the tasks of social science in the largest sense (i) by keeping the fact constantly in mind that we must be able to answer questions like the above, before social science will amount to anything ; (2) by remembering that our only means of answering these questions is such investigation of the inside facts of society as will reveal the workings of all the influences concerned in social reactions ; (3) by submitting to the necessity of following discovered principles of research, from the foundation up through the whole mass of evidence in which truth about social influence is contained. In other words, if we are to prepare ourselves either to discover truth about such questions as the above, or even to pass judgment upon statements on the subject made by others, we must learn the methods of knowledge throughout the whole region of facts in which knowledge is contained. Hence we have to be sure of the rudiments oi psychical science, because it deals with those forces which are elementary among the factors of social reactions.

The departments of knowledge which must somehow be controlled before we shall be in a position to answer questions of the order of generality just proposed may be indicated in various ways.

In the first place, a scientific order may be considered, as it appears in the table of contents of Wundt's Meihodenlehre.'

CONTENTS OF WUNDT'S " METHODENLEHRE."

FIRST VOLUME. FIRST DIVISION. GENERAL METHODOLOGY.

Chap. I. The Methods of Investigation. I. Analysis and synthesis.

(a) General significance of the analytical and of the synthetic method.

'C/. American Journal of Sociology, September, 1897, pp. 161-3.

' K2(2>Ward, "The Place of Sociology among the Sciences," American Journal