Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/589

 NOTE ON WARD'S "PURE SOCIOLOGY" 571

close analysis of generalization. Ward seems to put the whole stress upon one step of the generalizing process i. e., discovery of the work- ing correlations of phenomena, as, for instance, in so locating our planet with reference to the other heavenly bodies that we have an explanation of the "milky way." He says relatively little about that higher generalizing process which results in subsuming many indi- vidual phenomena under a generic concept; the process by which we arrive, for example, at either of the more general notions with which his own book is concerned "origin," "spontaneous," "development/ "society," "achievement," "sociology," "taxis," "genesis," "telesis," etc., etc. He of course has the proper place in his own thinking for this logical process, and he has it more or less clearly in view (e, g., p. 55), but it does not get its share of attention in the argument.

In further expanding the idea of generalization Ward unconsciously presents an instance of standing so straight that one leans backward. Referring to the primary sociological conception that there is "law in history," and assuming that the task of sociology is to find out what the law is, he takes his stand on an unimpeachable proposition : " Sociology can only become a science when human events are recog- nized as phenomena" (p. 57). He then permits his suspicion that somebody else may force a narrow meaning upon the term "phe- nomena" to betray him into doing just that himself. He continues :

When we say that they are due to the actions of men, there lurks in the

word actions the ghost of the old doctrine of free-will In other words,

the old-fashioned doctrine of free-will assumes that men may act differently from what they do act, irrespective of character and environment (p. 57).

Thereupon he proceeds to substitute his own particular brand of determinism for the cruder preconception of phenomena. Logically considered, however, the one prejudice is just as impertinent as the other. Our data are the things that occur, or which the mind presents to itself as having occurred. This is all that the term "phenomena" in the first stage of criticism contains. When we begin scientific inquiry, the addition to the notion "existence" or "occurrence" is an empty, formal notion of causality. What has occurred, or is, has had its being for sufficient reasons of some sort or other. Of what sort, we do not claim to know in advance. The term "phenomena" stands for an object of inquiry at just this stage. Probably no logical category is less frequently abused than the one so designated. It is quite unnecessary, and needlessly obstructive and confusing, to make our fight against unwarranted assumptions over the shoulders of this term. Given