The Object Matter of Sociology

Abstract

Necessity of determining the object matter of sociology.-In the present chaos of different conflicting presuppositions and methods found in sociological textbooks and monographs it is impossible either to reach a systematization of the results of sociological research or to plan a rational program of future studies without a reconsideration of the current conceptions of the object matter of our science. Sociology as a humanistic science. -Sociology must have a certain class of data as its object matter, and these data must be such as to allow a rational body of knowledge to be constructed about them. There are two distinct classes of scientific data: cultural and natural. Cultural phenomena when taken as objects of theoretic reflection already possess a humanistic coefficient, of which natural phenomena are deprived. Since it is imposible to combine any knowledge about natural facts with any knowledge about cultural facts into one logical system, sociology must choose whether it should be exclusively a natural or exclusively a humanistic science. The main interest of sociologists has always been in data with the humanistic coefficient, and it should in future confine itself to such. Criticism of sociology as science of concrete societies.-The oldest definition of sociology is that of a generalizing and explanatory science of society taken as a concrete collectivity of human beings in their total cultural life. This makes sociology almost identical with either philosophy of history or comparative ethnography. It is based upon certain postulates concerning society which on investigation prove misleading. Criticism of sociology as general science of culture.-The second and more generally accepted definition of sociology claims for it the role of fundamental science of culture in assuming that all cultural phenomena are social. But the world of culture is composed of objective systems with a fixed rational order among their elements, independent even of social communication and co-operation; these are already divided among the special sciences, and the only general science of them which is possible is philosophy. Sociology can only hope that there are systems of specifically social phenomena left to it. Definition of social phenomena.-Every cultural science deals with a particular class of values and a corresponding class of human activities. We can distinguish the following classes-hedonistic, technical, economic, legal, religious, symbolic, aesthetic, and intellectual phenomena. There remains another class-men as objects, i.e., individuals and groups as specific social values given to empirical human subjects, and activities tending to influence individuals or groups. This is the proper field of sociology. Here we find four different categories of typically social phenomena: (1) a single action aiming to modify in some way an individual or a collectivity, its essential elements being a tendency of the subject to influence the object in a definite way, and the reaction of the object; (2) reciprocal activity, givin rise to a social relation when the behavior of two or more individuals toward each other is regulated by norms imposing social obligations; (3) the social individual as viewed by his social environment and himself with regard to his physical aspect, psychological type, moral type, and social originality; (4) the social group, which appears under three different aspects: as an aggregate of individuals, a social organization, and a moral union. Sociology divides into four branches corresponding to these categories, respectively. Relation between sociology and other cultural sciences.-Sociology thus defined nearly coincides with the actual empirical research of modern sociologists, and also includes much material now being dealt with by several branches of investigations whose claims to be separate sciences are not well founded, i.e., the materials of criminology, ethics, theory of education, and political theory treated from a comparative and explanatory point of view. Out of the materials now dealt with by individual and group psychology, sociology claims all those with an intrinsically social character, i,e., which involve particular aspects of activities bearing on human individuals and groups. Because there is hardly any concrete cultural process which does not contain social elements among others, sociology is closely connected with other cultural sciences: it is the central cultural science.