THE SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY.
I. THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIOLOGICAL METHOD.
The primary purpose of this paper is to describe, not what the writer thinks sociology ought to be, but what it actually is, up to date. The secondary purpose, to be taken up in a later section of the paper, is to point out certain lines of development which sociological theory must inevitably follow.
By way of anticipation it may be said at once that the defini- tion or description of sociology to be used in a subsequent paper is : Sociology is the study of men considered as affecting and as affected by association.^
It goes without saying that this description of sociology is not a definition of the preserve that can be claimed by any academic department of sociology. As will be pointed out before the close of this paper, we shall remain unable to see, not to say solve, the problems of association, so long as we remain unable to realize that our academic divisions of labor upon the problems are measures of convenience, which become inconven- ient whenever they obscure the actual correlations of common subject-matter.
Innumerable definitions or descriptions of sociology are in vogue. Each represents the opinion of a person or of a school, in opposition to some other view of what sociology is or ought to be. No one of these views can as yet command the assent of all the sociologists. No one of them can prove that it has the adherence of a majority or of the most weighty sociologists. There is one fact, however, which crops out in the writings of all the different sorts of sociologists, namely : they are all try- ing to reach judgments of a higher degree of generality than the subject-matter of any single branch of social science is compe- tent to authorize. It makes no difference how narrowly a given
■ This conception has been ably treated by Mr. R. G. Kimble, in a paper entitled "Contributions to the Comparative Study of Association," American Journal OF Sociology, March, 1899.
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