Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/827

 THE SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY 8l I

contemptible achievement. It is all the more respectable if we are perfectly clear in our own minds about the difference between such knowledge and knowledge that is definitely quantitative. Sociology is an attempt to know the factors that are always at work in every group of human beings, from the primitive pair, or the horde, to the modern religious congregation, or trade union, or club, or international alliance. Such factors are to be traced to the rudimentary conditions explained to us by physiolog}^ and psychology, e. g., irritability and suggestibility. They appear in more complex forms as habit, imitation, invention. They are organized into sympathy and antipathy. They act with accumu- lations of physical and mental tradition. They become conflict, cooperation, individualization, and socialization. They arrive at last at the varieties of developed forms of association that are manifested by the most evolved societies. It is desirable and possible to know these factors of individual and social life quali- tatively, in such a way that it will be feasible to rationalize life more intelligently. In order that we may not yield to the tempta- tion to become dogmatic upon an insufficient basis, we should be advised at the outset, however, of the limitations of this knowl- edge. The amount of knowledge within the reach of today's sociology (in the large and inclusive sense) simply puts us in a position to judge of social reactions a little more sanely than people can who do not have the use of an equal amount of knowledge. We cannot yet in a single instance formulate in advance the influences that will produce a proposed social reaction in such a way that the formula can compare in precision and certainty with typical formulas in chemistry. Instead of being able to say, for example,

2SH,-f 30,= 2SO,+ H,0 ,

the best that we can say is something like this : Representing the fundamental human desires by A, B, C, D, E, F, and representing those desires as they appear in a given social situation by unde- termined coefficients and exponents, we have at the most some- thing like the following :

The given situation = ?^' }B' ?C' PZ?" }£' }F\