Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/799

 THE SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY 783

These questions call for the conclusions toward which all inquiries into the facts about people properly converge. Soci- ology has undertaken to bring together the straggling ends of social research so that this remotely implied result will begin to appear in reality. The standpoint of sociology is thus an outlook that contemplates humanity in its wholeness. Sociology deliber- ately undertakes to establish the perspective in which to view all that may be learned about humanity. Sociology proposes to reconstruct the life of man, not by substitution of a new science to displace the older sciences of man, but by organizing these sciences into a system of reciprocally reinforcing reports of humanity as a whole.

Let us be more specific by taking the "trust" as an illustra- tion. It is possible to analyze the trust from the standpoint of law, or from the standpoint of economics, or from the stand- point of politics, or from the standpoint of diplomacy, or from the standpoint of morals in the larger sense, or from the stand- point of industrial or technical evolution. The sociologist sees that each of these view-points affords an angle of vision from which to look upon the trust as it reveals certain combinations of human conditions and human quality. Now, the sociologist wants something more and better than these detached views. He wants to combine them into one view. He wants to have such a panorama of human conditions and qualities present to the mind that this incident, the trust, will fall into its relative place and proportion in the interplay of constant and general with temporary and special forces throughout the whole moving spectacle.

It may be asked whether all this is merely for purposes of thought, or has it a relation to further human action ? Most certainly the latter. Just as the supplanting of Ptolemaic by Copernican astronomy affects the daily life of every sailor in the world, so the development of a sociology that is a report of what is objectively discoverable in the conditions and processes of human society will furnish the premises and the platform for a constantly improving art of living. As, in the case of naviga- tion, the science has to be diluted through many simplifications