Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/409

 METHODOLOGY OF THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 389

VII. The Sustaining System.

VIII. The Distributing System. IX. The Regulating System. X. Social Types and Constitutions. XI. Social Metamorphoses. XII. Qualifications and Summary.

In all this, conceptions are exploited which call for a different order of generalization from that which is peculiar to any search-science about society. The idea of social "type" for example, refers not merely to a political type, nor to an ecclesiastical type, but to a correlation of persons, for whatever chief purpose ; /. e., to type generally, not specifi- cally. It leads to the perception that there are forms of correlations of persons, produced by large varieties of motive, yet manifesting similar- ities and possibly samenesses of structure and process. The biological coloring in Spencer's terms may be a mere accident of immature thought. It is not essential. It marks a stage in the endeavor to express the problems of social correlation which the sociologists are trying to define. Since Spencer wrote, the sociologists have made their expressions of their problem still more definite.

In general, we may conclude about the present outlook of the soci- ologists as follows :

All the kinds of knowledge which have been discussed thus far in this course may be considered as one body of facts, discovered by dif- ferent processes, and analyzed and classified so as to keep its distinct phases as clear as possible. When knowledge about people is consid- ered thus as a whole — these facts set in order by ethnology, history, phi- lology, and the other "sciences" of human products — it constitutes a stage of knowledge which I prefer to designate collectively by the term descriptive sociology. Without making definitions, I offer the follow- ing outline of different stages in the process of organizing and inter- preting the raw material of knowledge about society. This outline will help to distinguish subsequent stages of interpretation.

I. Descriptive sociology" sets in order the forms in which societary contacts occur. Descriptive sociology has to recast, if necessary, and so far as necessary, the material which is collected at first hand by other stages of the scientific process (history, ethnology, etc.), so that these common forms will appear in the discrete facts. The antecedent social

'Against the use of this term vide Ward, "Static and Dynamic Sociology," Political Science Quarterly, Vol. X, No. 2; and in favor of it. Small, same title, American Iournal of Sociology, September, 1895, and May, 1898, p. 857.