Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/597

 REVIEWS 579

As a piece of scientific work Social Control is provokingly complete. It is the rare exception for a book of its importance to leave so few fair openings for dissent. The most diligent search that I can make brings to light no material errors of commission, but at the worst faults of omission. To blame the author of a book brimfull of origi- nality for not doing more would serve no further purpose than to indi- cate a pathological condition of the reviewer's judgment. This is not to say that the phenomena of social control have now received their ultimate analysis and final classification. It is to say that Dr. Ross has carried the analysis far beyond its previous state, and that further work must either run independently the lines of his preliminary survey, or else take its points of departure from him.

There are evident dangers in applying Dr. Ross's method. Two of the most obvious of them may be reduced to terms of each other, but they may also be viewed separately. The one may be described as a form of the post quod propter quod fallacy. That is, we discover that through a certain type of phenomenon, say "assemblage," to take an illustration from the studies out of which the book grew, social con- trol is exerted. In a given case the phenomenon "assemblage" is present. Thereupon we may leap to the conclusion that "assemblage" is the cause of the control, whereas in the given instance it may be the effect. The other form of this fallacy may be described as a failure to employ what my colleague, Professor T. C. Chamberlin, has called the "method of the multiple working hypothesis." 1 That is, we discover that "law," for instance, is a means of control. Thereupon we con- clude that in a given community subject to law it is the law which exerts the efficient control over persons in question. In truth they might perform the same acts if the law did not exist ; and the problem with regard to them is : How many of the possible means of control are effective in their case, and what proportion of influence is exerted by each ?

Another danger is analogous with the traditional first reaction of medical students upon contact with clinical or dissecting material. One is apt to rebound from unsophisticated awe of social institutions, like "ideals," "belief," "religion," into cynical contempt for machin- ery that performs such menial work or into revolt against the tyranny of a process so ruthlessly exposed. I suspect that Dr. Ross himself had not as definitely located these and similar pitfalls when he wrote the papers afterward recast in this volume. They contained various symp- 1 Journal of Geology, November 1897.