Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/658

 642 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

sciences. This occurs chiefly in the universities. It would not require a long argument to show that at best these divisions are likely to become obstructive, in spite of their adoption for scientific and academic convenience. Whether inquiry into the principles of human association be conducted by use of a tradi- tional or an extemporized division of labor, it is all virtually one search into one reality. The divisions exist in our minds, not in the object. The aim of science is to comprehend these apparent diversities as members of the unity of which they are aspects.

There should be a name to cover all study, of whatever sort, which contributes to knowledge of the societary reality, or asso- ciated human life, just as the name "biology" designates no specific field of research, but the whole realm of inquiry into the conditions and processes of vegetable and animal life. It is theo- retically of very slight importance in itself what name is chosen for that whole organon of knowledge about society. The tend- ency among sociologists, at least, seems to be toward reassertion of the judgment that the name "sociology" is, on the whole, most suitable and convenient." This tendency is parallel with gravitation in use of the name " biology." The latter is now under- stood as the comprehensive term for the whole of vital science. Similar use of the term "sociology" would, of course, give it a much broader application than belongs to it as the designation of a university chair, or of a specific division of social science. Every investigation of a phase of societary reality would in this sense be a chapter of sociology, just as vegetable and animal embryology, morphology, physiology, ecology, zoology, etc., are each and all chapters of biology. The persons now known as sociologists are no more sociologists in the proposed sense than the ethnologists, historians, economists, political scientists, etc. In parallel fashion there are no biologists today who are

' Thus Tarde (Les transformations du pouvoir, p. v) : " S'il n'est pas vrai que les diverses sciences sociales doivent se confondre d^sonnais en une seule, qui serait la sociologie, il est certain qu'elles doivent toutes s'y plonger I'une apr&s I'autre, pour en sortir soit retremp^es et rajeunies, soit glaciales et inanimdes. Cela depend de la quality du bain."