SOCIOLOGICAL METHODOLOGY 43 



so great, the process is difficult and the results more or less un- 

 certain. Under the comparative method, according to Comte, 

 we have comparison between society and animal groups, between 

 co-existing states of society and between consecutive stages in 

 social growth. A combination of this last and of the method 

 derived from biology has given rise to the historical method, 1 

 where the purpose is not merely to deduce general laws from 

 specific historical events but to discover the " filiation " in suc- 

 cessive events. Two other forms of the inductive method have 

 come to have increasing vogue since Comte's time, the statistical 

 method and what might well be termed the " inverse historical " 

 method, i. e., the analysis of current events with the purpose of 

 rinding a clue to the interpretation of the past. 2 



In this chapter we will consider Quetelet because of his develop- 

 ment of the statistical method and his use of it in studying social 

 phenomena, Lilienfeld as representative of the analogical school 

 and De Greef as representative of those whose social philosophy is 

 based largely on the method of logical classification, and in the 

 following chapter consider Darwin and his successors as repre- 

 sentatives of the inductive method. 



LAMBERT A. J. QUETELET (1796-1874) 

 The Statistical Method 



Such a large place has the statistical method 3 played in all the 

 social sciences during the past half century that some place needs 

 to be given it, and especially to its use in connection with the 

 doctrine of adaptation as a theory of social progress, for it is an 

 instrument of first importance in diagnosing social pathology or 

 mal-adaptation, as it is also in measuring social growth and 

 adaptation. 



According to Quetelet, statistics, as a science, dates back no 

 longer than i82o, 4 but M. Block shows that in its essential fea- 



1 Logic, ch. X. 



2 Carver, Sociology and Social Progress, p. 64. 

 8 King, Elements of Statistical Methods, ch. I. 



4 M. Block, Traitt de Statistique, p. 48; Hankins, "Quetelet," Columbia Unit 

 Studies, xxxi, pp. 372. 



