Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/811

 MOOT POINTS IN SOCIOLOGY.

VI. THE FACTORS OF SOCIAL CHANGE.

IT is clear that along with the organic analogy we must give up the time-honored division into social anatomy, social physi- ology, and social psychology. Since there is no social cadaver to dissect, why use the term "anatomy,"' which refers to the knowledge gained by the simple "cutting up" (ava ro/Aeii/) of a body? Say rather social morphology, which will describe, not only human relations and groupings, but also their mutations in the course of time their embryology, so to speak. Why apply the term "physiology" to the description of processes and prod- ucts that are in no wise physical? The fact that such interac- tions as conflict and competition involve something more than the action of mind on mind need not hinder us from recognizing that what the organicists call "function" or "life" in society is essentially psychical and naturally becomes the subject-matter of social psychology. As for social pathology, it cannot "arrive" until we have a means of distinguishing the normal from the abnormal in society. So long as divorce and lynching and political crime and the trust movement lend themselves to pre- cisely opposite interpretations, there is no firm line to be drawn between social health and social disease. Each school of thought has its own diagnosis of the morbid, and no objective tests have yet been agreed on.

On mounting from the plane of description to that of theory, it becomes possible to bisect sociology into social statics and social dynamics. This division has always been made to hinge on the purely formal contrast of coexistence and succession. A study of cross-sections or flash-light pictures of society would show what social structures belong together are congruous. The comparison of series of such states in different societies would disclose regularities of succession. If this were so, the cross-section of a society in feverish transformation would be as

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