Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/525

 THE SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY $09

name was invented. Tarda implies belief that the old philoso- phers and theologians were actually the pioneers in the fields of study which have at last reached such intensive cultivation that the class of investigators known as sociologists had to be differ- entiated." He speaks of the "change promising better results" which is observable from the time when "such specialists in sociology" as the philologists, the philosophers of religion, and especially the economists began to perform the more modest task of identifying minute facts and of formulating their laws.

There has been a gradual recognition of interlacings among human relationships, and this perception has been calling for larger coordinations of research, and closer organization of results, than older students of society felt to be necessary. We have consequently arrived at conceptions of the relations of knowl- edge about society which constitute a totally new setting for all particular facts. This anticipated organon of knowledge about society is sociology. In order to get the most intimate view of sociology, both as it is and as it must be, it is worth while to make a rapid survey of certain typical attempts to formulate sociological problems and methods. We may do this most conveniently for our present purpose by reference to Earth's Die Philosophie der Gescliicliic als Sociologie ."

Earth's thesis is that there is no sociology except the phi- losophy of history. The theorem is not true, but it contains truth. The philosophy of history attempted to formulate the laws of social sequences. Sociology almost universally attempts to formulate, not merely laws of sequence, but also laws of past and present correlation. Many sociologists declare that the most important division of sociology is beyond both these groups, in laws of social aims and of the available means of attaining them. Even if we were reduced to a conception of sociology which identifies its subject-matter with that of the philosophy of history, it would be easy to show that sociology is perfecting a method which distinguishes it from the philosophy of history

' Les Lois sociales, p. 26.

' Vol. I (Leipzig, 1897). Cf. review, American Journal of Sociology, March