Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/662

 646 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

and will remain, in effect trifles. A notorious case is much of the work done by certain disciples of Le Play upon the budgets of workingmen's families.' At every stage in the advancement of sociology there is need of signals from observers on the high places about the kind of knowledge most in demand at that moment to reinforce the system of knowledge at its weakest points. This second procedure, like the other, is of the philo- sophical rather than of the scientific order of generality. It may be said to belong to the social philosopher rather than to the methodologist ; yet the connections between the two must be so close, even if there is an actual division of labor at this point, that we may, without serious inaccuracy, speak of this second procedure as belonging to general methodology.

It will be seen from the foregoing that the growth of socio- logical method tends to undermine the walls of division that have been constructed between the social sciences, and indeed between those sciences and psychology and general philosophy. It tends to call for restatements of social problems in terms of their relations to the whole social reality. It tends to repudia- tion of pedantic academic statements of problems, merely in terms of their interest for the isolated division of research in which they have been considered. It tends to subordinate all the valid means of investigation and report, that have been perfected within the field of societary research, to any uses that may arise anywhere, at any time, in the solution of any species of societary problem.

Thus sociological method has developed into demand for concentration of mediate methodological resources. Sociology indicates that the fragmentary problems of the "sciences" are to be made real by restatement in their objective relations as problems of association. Sociology is a symptom that pomts to restoration of the "sciences" from the effort to live unto themselves. Sociology points to discharge, by each of the partial sciences, of the function of furnishing appropriate parts

■ It is only necessary to compare the sort of information referred to with the standards of Le Play himself and his more intelligent followers to expose its futility.