THE CONCEPTS AND METHODS OF SOCIOLOGY 



BY FRANKLIN HENRY GIDDINGS 



[Franklin Henry Giddings, Professor of Sociology, since 1894, Columbia Univers- 

 ity, b. Sherman, Connecticut, March 23, 1855. A.B. Union College, 1877; A.M. 

 ibid. 1889; Ph.D. ibid. 1897; LL.D. Oberlin, 1900. Journalist, 1877-1888; 

 Lecturer, Political Science, Bryn Mawr College, 1888-89; Associate, ibid. 

 1889-91; Associate Professor, ibid. 1891-92; Professor, ibid. 1892-94; Lec- 

 turer on Sociology, Columbia University, 1890-94. Member of the American 

 Economic Association; American Sociological Society; Philadelphia Academy 

 of Natural Science; American Ethnological Society; Institut International de 

 Sociologie, Paris. Author of The Principles of Sociology (French, Russian, 

 Hebrew, Bohemian, Spanish, and Japanese translations); Democracy and Em- 

 pire; Inductive Sociology; and other minor works.] 



To set forth in a brief paper the fundamental conceptions of 

 any modern science is a difficult task. The difficulty increases as 

 we pass from the relatively simple sciences that have to do with 

 inorganic matter, to the highly complex sciences of life and of 

 mind. And when we come to the phenomena presented by aggre- 

 gations of living beings phenomena of the interaction of mind with 

 mind, phenomena of the concerted activity of many individuals 

 working out together a common destiny we have a subject 

 for scientific study too many-sided, too intricate, for description 

 in a few comprehensive phrases, and the scientific study it- 

 self arrives at fundamental conceptions only after a long and ex- 

 tensive process of elimination. Fundamental conceptions in such 

 a field are necessarily general truths, expressing the relations that 

 endless facts of detail bear to one another, or to underlying group- 

 ings, processes, or causes. A brief account, therefore, of the funda- 

 mental conceptions of sociology, and of the methods available 

 for the scientific study of society, must remorselessly exclude those 

 concrete particulars that lend to our knowledge of collective life 

 its preeminently real its human interest. It must be re- 

 stricted to conceptions that are elemental, general, and in a degree 

 abstract. 



Conforming to this necessity, I shall group the fundamental 

 conceptions of sociology in three divisions, namely: first, concepts 

 of the subject-matter of sociological study, that is to say, of society; 

 second, concepts pertaining to the analysis and classification of 

 social facts, and incidentally to the corresponding subdivisions of 

 sociological science; third, concepts of the chief processes entering 

 into social evolution, and of the inferred causes. 



The word "society" has three legitimate significations. The 

 first is that of the Latin word societas, meaning "companionship," 



