Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/403

 METHODOLOGY OF THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 383

lines of a given plane, and also in the variations that ensue in the passage from plane to plane.

The social problem is, accordingly, the problem of knowledge which all the social sciences must together collect and organize. The social sciences have for their common task, then —

{g) Discovery of the laws of reciprocal influence between indi- viduals and institutions. This discovery must be sought through investigations of such reactions both in selected eras — prehistoric, ancient, mediaeval, modern, contemporary — and in successive c\\\V\za.- tions; /. e., it must be both statical and dynamical. No single section of this study can be complete in itself. In order to justify generalizations, there is need of a distinct department of social investigation whose function shall be to combine the results of all related investigations.

Throughout men's study of human association, distinguished from all the studies of individual characteristics, men have been pursuing the quest of relationships between the individual and institutions within the conditioning environment. This generalized statement of the object of search may or may not have been adopted in any par- ticular instance. Species or specimens alone of these reactions may have absorbed attention at particular times. Comparatively restricted groups only may have been carefully investigated. All the study that men have given to phenomena of association falls partly, how- ever, under this description. We have at length developed a distinct consciousness that this knowledge of the relations of the individual to institutions is a scientific desideratum. With this consciousness we are aware that there has been a vast amount of study of portions of the phenomena included under this general formula. We see that this study has been pursued with the use of categories differing widely in their appropriateness and precision. {E. g., we use the unequally precise terms "economic," "social," "political," "ethical," "historic," phenomena.)

We are thus sharpening the scientific perception that we now need, first of all, adequate objective description and classification of reactions between individuals and institutions. Such descriptions and classifica- tions we have, to a certain amount and extent, with partial interpreta- tion, as, e. g., in the case of large sections of industrial phenomena. Here cause and effect in the play of the wealth desire are made to do most of the interpreting. Whether the interpretations are final, remains to be seen. We are discovering further, however, that most