Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/795

 THE SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY _ 779

points to which the active and fruitful sciences may attach them- selves. The claim to be emphasized is that sociology is the combining, organizing, correlating, integrating stage in the pro- cess of knowing human society. It is primarily formal. It is only secondarily material. Through the processes of sociology knowledge of society first begins to approach objective realit}'. It is previously disintegrated and consequently fictitious substitutes for reality. At the same time the fragments of reality are brought to sociology by sciences or experiences that deal with those frag- ments, as sociology does not, at first hand.

It is often said that the sociologists are not even agreed among themselves as to the subjects with which sociology has to deal. There is more truth in the statement than were to be wished, yet it is not so close to the truth as would be inferred by the uninformed. The more exact truth is that the sociolo- gists are each reasonably sure of what they are driving at, but the unknown elements are so numerous that sociologists are working on many distinct problems. They are more or less inclined to reserve the name " sociology " for the particular problem or type of problems upon which they are individually engaged ; and they are disposed to bestow other names upon the problems that occupy their neighbors. There is thus among the sociologists themselves a yielding to the temptation to ignore the whole for the part, and there is difference of opinion about proper names for the parts. In the large, however, the differences among the sociologists really concern this compara- tively trifling matter of names much more than the real quest of their researches. To be sure, there are no universally accepted formulas of the sphere of sociology, but there is a considerable parallelism of tendency among the workers who call themselves sociologists. Whatever be the sociologist's definition of his science, or his proposed method, he is likely to be bent* upon reaching an account of the social whole as a whole, instead of resting with an account of an abstracted part of the whole.' It has been true until sociology began to develop its program that all sciences short of cosmic philosophy, whether we have

' Cf. above, pp. 506, 507.