Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/508

 488 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

tern might undergo being disregarded, since these belonged to the dynamic point of view. The conditions of equilibrium of the social system, as of every system, can therefore be repre- sented by equations a fact which indicates that the system is susceptible neither of translation in any direction whatever nor of rotation in any manner.

Although perhaps this assimilation of social statics with mechanical statics has been nowhere set forth in all its rigor, yet it represents the dominating conception of the oldest and most learned sociological school, and this school has exerted its influence up to the present time in all the social sciences from economics to politics.

In the history of the sciences, statics was naturally developed before dynamics ; in fact, the first is only the simplest, most general, and most abstract part of the second. It is, therefore, not astonishing that in sociology, as in mechanics, the dynamic point of view appeared and was developed until at last (with Herbert Spencer, for example) it became almost the exclusive point of view.

Auguste Comte has fully shown that the distinction between statics and dynamics extends to all phenomena whatever; for example, to biology, in which one rationally distinguishes between the anatomical point of view, relating to organization, and the physiological point of view, properly speaking, relating to ideas of life. He added, however, that there would be danger of neglecting the indispensable permanent combination of those two general points of view, which, in reality if not in analysis, are as indissolubly united as are order and progress.

Sociology being abstract or concrete, social statics will like- wise be both abstract and concrete. It will have for its object the study of societies considered in a state of repose, either in a determined period of time and at a given place in space (con- crete statics), or independently of time and space (abstract statics). As for dynamic sociology, it has for its subject the science of the evolution of societies, which is likewise considered from this double point of view.

After many others, Corte, in L experience des peuples, 1 denies

P. 41.