THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIOLOGY 



BY GEORGE EDGAE VINCENT 



[George Edgar Vincent, Professor of Sociology, University of Chicago, since 1900. 

 b. Rockford, Illinois, March 21, 1864. A.B. Yale , 1885; Ph.D. Chicago, 1896. 

 Graduate, Chicago, 1896. Principal of Instruction, Chautauqua Institution, 

 1892. Author of The Social Mind and Education; An Introduction to the 

 Study of Society (with A. W. Small).] 



THE turbid stream of social theory which flowed out of the past 

 into the nineteenth century carried a confused mass of knowledge and 

 speculation about every aspect of collective life. The penetrating 

 idealism of Plato, the realistic insight of Aristotle, the semi-humorous 

 sanity of More, the shrewd analysis of Machiavelli, the upheaving 

 dialetic of Hobbes, the wide vision of Vico, the contagious paradoxes 

 of Rousseau, the naturalistic explanations of Montesquieu, the sci- 

 entific generalizations of Adam Smith, the optimistic dreams of 

 Condorcet, the mystical interpretations of Lessing and Bunsen all 

 these conflicting, overlapping, or partial theories formed a bewildering 

 tradition which it has been the task of nineteenth-century philosophers 

 and scientists to sift, enlarge, and systematize. The one common idea 

 appearing in many forms throughout this mass of speculation was that 

 of law as finding expression in the affairs of men. This recognition 

 of inevitable sequences and coexistences, to whatever cause attributed, 

 was the fundamental principle which the social philosophy of the 

 nineteenth century received from the past. 



The elaboration of this vast tradition has involved both analysis 

 and synthesis. The mass had to be classified, differentiated. At 

 the outset economic science alone had begun to assume a distinctive 

 form. With the increase of observation and reflection still other facts 

 were set off into specialized fields of research. Thus one outstanding 

 achievement of the century has been the division of a confused 

 tradition into a number of fairly well-defined social sciences. But 

 there has also been a persistent effort to resist this dissolution into 

 parts, to restore to their larger relationships the abstracted elements; 

 i. e., to preserve the unity of social theory as a whole. Such is the 

 secular antithesis between analysis and synthesis, between science 

 and philosophy. 



The term "sociology" is used in at least four different senses, 

 two of which are directly related to the present discussion: (1) as 

 a vague general term to include the entire field of social fact and 

 theory; (2) as a social philosophy which aims at a unifying con- 

 ception of society as a whole; (3) "pure" or "general" sociology 

 seeks recognition as a science, classifying facts and discovering 



