Some Contributions to The History of Sociology. Section I. Introduction

Abstract

Knowledge of work already done is a necessary preliminary to scientific procedure. Through misfortune rather than fault the early American sociologists were able to satisfy this condition only in a meager degree. Consciousness of the lack of social science in general is a late achievement. Sociological consciousness is a specialized phase of the more general apprehension. The outline, to which the first section is an introduction, sketches certain methological developments, in the older divisions of social science, which proved to be antecedents of sociology. In brief, attempts to interpret human experience have advanced from mysticism to criticism, and to differentiated and specialized criticism. The exhibit which is to follow indicates certain gradations in this progress which emerged in sociology. Waymarks of the evolution of sociology are selected chiefly from German methodologists, because their influence upon the generation of American scholars who won academic recognition for the subject is more evident and cumulative than other sequences.