Fifty Years Later
BY MORRIS GINSBERG
Athe beginning of the twentieth century there was wide agreement among representa- tive thinkers about the nature and possibilities of a general science of society.. Durkheim in France defined sociology as the science of social institutions, their genesis and development. Hobhouse, in this country, defined it as the study of societies, their structure, growth and decay, Wundt, summing up the general attitude in Ger- many, defined it as the study of the structure and the conditions of human society. All these writers were well aware that no science corresponding to these definitions did in fact exist. They did not wish' to belittle the work of the ,founders of sociology, but they felt that these pioneers were over-Ambitious and too easily satisfied with general formulae rapidly arrived at, such as Comte's law of the three stages. It was clear to them that the material for a general theory of society would have to be supplied by a number of special disciplines, complementing or supple- menting each other. Many such disciplines were already in existence and others were in the process of development. What was general sociology to do in relation to these specialisms? To this question the answer was that its main function was to make them aware of each other, to get them to realise that at bottom they were all concerned with the same reality, that the various activities which they studied were all social achievements, products of group-life. There were two dangers to be guarded against. The first was the tendency of specialists to neglect aspects of social life with which they are not directly concerned. Thus until recently it was rare fOr economists to pay attention to religious or moral factors or for moralists to inquire into the relations between moral codes and legal sys- tems. The second was to give undue prominence to the 'factors with which the specialist is most familiar in the explanation of social phenomena. Thus•the biologist tends to stress tee genetic and racial' factors, the historian of thought to con- sider intellectual development as the cause of changes in civilisation. the economic historian to interpret social and cultutal movements as con- ditioned or determined by economic factors. The ''business of a general sociology is to resist the tendencies inherent in speciAsation. to isolation and bias, to insist that in causal explanation no pre-eminence is to be claimed a priori for any one factor over the rest, that the relative influence of the various factors can only be deter- mined inductively, and that the answers may well differ for different societies or different periods.
If there was agreement about the function of a general science of society, there was also agree- ment about the method to be used. This was what came to be called the comparative method. By comparing different societies it was hoped that it would be possible to distinguish between the local and variable factors and the general or universal, to determine the way in which the
forces at work are balanced at different stages or in different types of society, and to discover the conditions which might account for the diversities as well as for the similarities.
What is the situation now, after fifty years? The specialisms have multiplied and have made great advances both in the accumulation of data and in their interpretation. Though there are still the tendencies toward isolation and bias, I think it is true to say that the need of which Durkheim spoke, `to bring sociology into the specialisms and so turn them into genuine social sciences,' has been widely recognised. In other words, since his time, workers in the several fields of social studies have become, as is so often said, more `sociologically minded,' that is, they have become increasingly aware of the interdependence of social facts. In estimating the achievements of sociology as a general science of society, the influence thus exerted on the special social sciences, more particularly historical studies, should not be forgotten.
Nevertheless, the difficulties which troubled the minds of the founders of sociology fifty years ago are still far from resolved. Sociology, in the sense of a general science of society, still suffers from claiming either too much or too little. It claims too much when it sets itself up as a kind of scientia scientiarum, purporting to give a com- plete explanation of human life and even to supply a whole philosophy. This is true of some Marxists and of those other writers who seek to find in sociology the basis for a theory of know- ledge, of morals or of religion. It claims too little when it gives up the attempt to discover the central conceptions needed to bring the special- isms into relation with each other and from which a synthesis might proceed, and if it merely lumps together under sociology all investigations having any sort of social reference.
The question thus arises whether any central conceptions are available to justify the claims of sociology to provide a synthesis of social studies. Durkheim found an answer in the notion of society as in some sense a new whole, qualitatively distinct from the members ompos- ing it. But this must remain a meta' hysical speculation until social laws are discovere .i which are irreducible or sui generis.
A more profitable line of approach to be found in the conception of development. "' 'teories of social development have in recent decades tended to fall into disrepute, largely be ben tuse of their association with optimistic views of pro- gress and with crude interpretations of l• ological evolution. The result has been that v th very few exceptions, notably the encyclopaedic re- searches made by Hobhouse, the interpretation of development has been left to the Marxists. But the fertility of the idea is far from exhausted and the time is now ripe for re-examination and re- construction. What I have in mind is not a return to the idealist theories of an absolute mind reach- ing self-consciousness in the historical process. What is wanted is an empirical study of growth, arrest or decay; of the conditions affecting the development of knowledge and of the social and economic structure, more particularly, of the factors influencing the rate of change in the different spheres of social life and of the obstacles hindering general development. For such a study there now exists much richer material in rela- tion to both pre-industrial and industrial societies than was available at the beginning of the twentieth century. It seems obvious to me that it is only by an extension of the comparative method that we can hope to determine the rela- tive role of the economic, political and cultural factors in the development of mankind and that it is only by exploring the possibilities of the method in co-operation with the specialisms tbal sociology may be enabled to justify its claim ast general science of society. By development is meant the unfolding '3f man's powers. individual and collective, and died use of such powers in dealing with nature an himself. In this process man's rational faculli id play a steadily increasing part. The fundament task of modern sociology is to re-examine, in the,, light of the more abundant material now avail' able, the hypothesis suggested by Kant which he himself felt unable to test historically—the, hypothesis that in the course of social doer opment man is slowly and painfully rationalised and that man is moralised in proportion as becomes more rational. It is clear at once th,e:, rationality in thought, in conduct and in social organisations are different though related thing There is no direct connection, step by step, be' tween the growth of science, changes in moral] and changes in the social structure. The lhrd. movements have a partial independence and, to following their own course, may not only fail in advance evenly at every stage, but may actuallY impede one another. There is no law of necessarY or automatic progress. Men will not be moralised , despite themselves, and knowledge alone will n°: suffice to moralise them. Historically there it evidence of a growing correlation between, advances in knowledge, in morals and in social, organisation. Despite increasing convergence' however, the correlation is incomplete, and the movements are subject to reversals. The task of comparative sociology is to obtain a deeper knowledge of the factors making for discrepa°' cies in development and of the conditions favour' ing correlated growth, and to use this knowledge in directing future development.
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