Page:Philosophical Review Volume 6.djvu/199

183. The relation between economics and sociology has been much argued from the point of view of the departments interested, but in controversies upon the relations of the sciences no specialist as such has a right to the last word. The sociologists from Comte to Giddings have turned philosophy away from the front door only to receive it with open arms at the back, when wrapped in swaddling clothes and disguised as 'the classification of the sciences.' It would lead too far to criticise the classification here proposed; but it may be welcomed as an advance upon purely linear classifications, since it introduces a cross division in space of two dimensions. Yet while stereo-chemistry is abandoning diagrams on a plane as inadequate symbols of the relations of atoms in a molecule, the author believes that the intricate interrelations of knowledge may be thus made clear.

The meaning attached by Professor Giddings to sociology is obscured by the number and variety of the explanations. Perhaps the best means of approach is to consider what it is not. He quotes with strong disapproval a definition of it as the organization of the knowledge of man and society, furnished by "biology, anthropology, psychology, ethnology, demography, history, political and economic science, and ethics" (p. 12, note). Yet the work itself explains sociology in terms of one or the other of these sciences, or incorporates certain of their results: e.g., sociology is explained biologically as "the science of the reciprocal adjustment of life and its environment" (p. xix), psychologically as "the science of mental phenomena in their higher complications and reactions" (p. 26), and ethically as the science whose function is "to show that true happiness is necessarily cumulative" ( p. 386). The reason assigned for demurring to the definition quoted is, not that data from any of the sciences enumerated should be excluded from sociology, but that a true science cannot result from an agglomeration or federation of sciences. On the contrary, "a living science grows from a distinct nucleus" (p. 29). The definition, and the conception from which it flows, are wrong in ignoring the "nucleus" of sociology, the "single motive or principle uniquely characterizing the conscious individual as a social being and determining all his social relations" (p. 12). The argument seems to be, sociology is a living science, every living science grows from a nucleus; therefore, sociology must grow from a nucleus. As both premises are doubtful; the conclusion is invalid; but the universal question of the younger students of the subject, "What characteristic stamps a phenomenon as social?" (p. 13), is explained