Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/412

 392 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

5. Technological invention and adaptation, /. e., applied sociology, or social economics in the largest sense ; social control on the basis of systematized knowledge of social elements.

Before passing to more special divisions of methodology, it may be well to notice a frequent objection to this whole plan of investiga- tion. Self-confident critics affect to dispose of the sociological pro- gramme which we have outlined (especially pp. 114, 132, 167-9) with the summary judgment that the problem is preposterous, the solution impossible, and the method useless.

In reply we modestly insist that, if the verdict holds, it necessarily condemns all study of society that tries to reach valid generalizations, and it consequently dooms us to choose between wholesale credulity and utter agnosticism about efficient social forces. We cannot argue with the man who declares that social forces are beyond human formulation. On the other hand, no man who assumes that social forces may sometime be formulated can justify a less comprehensive survey of their operation than this syllabus proposes. Anything less inclusive is an abstraction. It is not the whole, but a selected part. Formulation of the facts about the part cannot be complete and con- clusive. They must be placed in their relations with the whole.

Proposal of such a general plan of social research is sometimes characterized as over-ambitious and chimerical. It should rather be said that general propositions about social laws, if not authorized by such survey as we have indicated, are merely irresponsible guesses. If we are confined to them for social guidance, our wisdom is sententious ignorance. Instead of over-ambition, insistence that there can be no credible generalizations of social laws until they are derived from comprehensive criticism of social relations is rather the humility of intelligent scholarship.

The world will be full of glib social doctrinaires so long as partial- ists can get credit for wisdom about society. The pedantry that prefers to be satisfied with a narrow generalization, rather than risk testing it by reference to a wider range of relations, affects lofty dis- approval of the larger inquiries which genuine scientific curiosity pursues. These extensions of search forthwith discredit previous formulas. They rouse suspicion that accepted versions of special relations are provincial and premature. They impeach dogmatic authority. They concede that prevalent notions covering the ques- tions to be investiarated are unsanctioned and unreliable. They