Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/169

 ORIGIN AND USE OF THE WORD "SOCIOLOGY" 155

for sociology, an investigator not only must have some command of the special sciences, but also must grasp at least one branch and that a central one of each of the three great groups of the preliminary sciences, the mathematical, the physical, and the biological. From these he acquires a training in precise obser- vation and rigorous logic, a familiarity with the sources of accumulated knowledge, a habit of detached and impersonal generalization, and an instinct for verifiying his generalizations by reference to matters of concrete fact. Yet if his education stop here, the sociologist is not unlikely to miss some of the most indispensable qualities, if not even acquire some of the most ineradicable of defects. The remedy lies in an adequate training in philosophical and in historical studies which, by old convention, based on use but not on reason, we speak of as outside the sciences. To test the adequacy of studies of the past, we must ask how they help to build up the student's con- ception of the future. From historical studies (interpreting these words in a broad sense) the student of sociology acquires most readily and fully the conception above all necessary to the statesman and the educationist of an evolutionary process in which nature is not necessarily the dominating, but may be the dominated, factor. This conception of man as conquering nature and determining for himself the conditions of life throws back the sociologist on the positive sciences with certain specific inquiries addressed in turn to the representatives of each one of the scientific specialisms of the day. The particular form and content of each of these inquiries will depend on which of the sciences is appealed to, but the general purpose of the ques- tion will be to ask : Under what limits and conditions, here and now, may man become master of his fate ? What ideals of action are sanctioned by the sciences ? What resources of contemporary science are available toward the realization of social ideals ? How to construct by the aid of the sciences a pathway to a fuller life ? Here the student reaches a point of view from which the scheme of the sciences is seen to be no other thing than a con- venient, and hence a continuous, indeed ever-extending, device for parceling out a difficult piece of work among squads of