DEFINITION OF SOME MODERN SCIENCES. 113 



the whole range of experience and of scientific thought is before it. 

 But the question is — how can this object be laid hold of? The 

 spontaneous, unreflecting attitude of mind is confessedly beyond 

 the reach of investigation. And if by reflection we endeavor to 

 describe and to explain the mental life, do we not construct for our 

 own purposes an object which is more or less artificial? 



This criticism implies no skeptical tendency. It surely will not 

 deter psychologists from their work of investigating the more subtle 

 elementary processes of mind, its unfolding in the individual and its 

 relations to the complex activities of its environment. 



SOCIOLOGY. 

 By LESTER F. WARD, 



U. 8. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 



SO far as the definition of sociology is concerned, it is simply the 

 science of society, or the science of social phenomena. All the 

 more specific definitions that have been proposed have created more con- 

 fusion than they have cleared up. What is needed in sociology is not 

 definitions, but a clear presentation of the scientific principles under- 

 lying it. There is one such principle, failure to recognize which causes 

 most of the difficulty in endeavoring to establish the science. This 

 principle, however, is one that also applies to psychology, biology, and 

 all the other sciences classed as 'complex' — to the biological sciences 

 and the moral sciences. This principle may be formulated as follows: 



In the complex sciences the quality of exactness is only perceptible 

 in their higher generalizations. 



Or, since exactness, i. e., uniformity, invariableness, reliability, 

 etc., is what constitutes scientific law, the same truth may be simplified 

 and reduced to the following form: 



Scientific laws increase in generality as the sciences to which they, 

 apply increase in complexity. 



In sociology, therefore, which is the most complex of the sciences, 

 the laws must be the most highly generalized. I shall not attempt to 

 do more here than bring forward a few illustrations of the above 

 propositions. It is clear that the method of sociology is essentially that 

 of generalization, i. e., of grouping phenomena and using the groups as 

 units. Nature works by this method, for example, in chemistry, where 

 it is believed that the higher compounds have as their units compounds 

 of lower orders. 



Social phenomena are obtrusive, ever-present, multitudinous. Their 

 very proximity is a bar to their full comprehension. This I have 

 called 'the illusion of the near,' and likened it to trying to see a city 



vol. lxi. — 8. 



