Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/165

 ORIGIN AND USE OF THE WORD "SOCIOLOGY" 151

convey the impression that hostility has ceased, indifference been expelled, or misundertanding corrected. There is, for instance, in many quarters a prejudice against sociology on the ground of its supposed antagonism to specialist studies of social phenomena. Sociology is, by these critics, conceived as an exclusive alternative to the group economics, politics, ethics, etc. As well accuse the architect of being inimical to the mason and the carpenter. For this and other reasons it remains a fact, evident to the most superficial observer, that numerous influential groups of philosophers, scientists, and critics still reject the word or restrict it either to some specialist application in science (as, for instance, to empirical anthropology), or to the vague purposes of popular usage. Of those who take up this position, some still do so on the grounds of genuine, though unconscious, ignor- ance of what scientific sociology stands for. Others and to be sure they are both numerous and influential have been at pains to investigate the case. Of these there are two main groups. The first group either denies the possibility of a general study of social phenomena in terms of causation, or admits it as an intangible contingency of a remote future. The second group, while admitting the present need and opportunity for a general study of social phenomena, yet denies the relevancy and legiti- macy of the work of professed sociologists. This second group of investigators customarily pursues general social studies under some other title than "sociology." Some of them do so by broadening out their own particular specialism economics, politics, jurisprudence, psychology, anthropology, etc. till it yields them a theory of social development, function, and organ- ization, which, however, is almost of necessity colored by the initial sectional bias. Students of economics, for instance, have been fertile in constructing systems rejected by economists as theories of business, but not admissible by sociologists as theories of society. From this particular source of error a fallacy of which ,/Esop made a well-known study other students of social theory free themselves by starting from the more comprehensive standpoint of philosophy or of history, and the resulting study is pursued under the title of "social philosophy" or of "philoso- phy of history."