42 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 
forces, some of whom, following the lead of Quételet, made use of 
the statistical method, as Buckle, Galton, and Pearson, while 
others, under the inspiration of Darwin, turned to an inductive 
study of social facts and forces as Ratzenhofer, Gumplowicz and 
the modern school of social scientists such as Le Play, Booth, 
Rountree and the eugenicists, —represented in England by 
Galton and Pearson and in America by Davenport,—and a 
final group have endeavored to explain social progress in terms of 
some one law or principle as Tarde and Giddings. 
As method is so important in any department of investigation, 
especially in one that is new, and inasmuch as an appreciation of 
the method used by an author often furnishes a valid means of 
criticizing his conclusions, it may be well to devote some place 
to a brief discussion of sociological methodology in general and of 
some methods as illustrated by specific writers in this field whose 
contribution to the development of the doctrine of adaptation 
has been indirect rather than direct. 
When Comte and Spencer wrote, the deductive method reigned 
almost supreme in social science, and though they prided them- 
selves on breaking away from the methods of the past, they were 
still, to a considerable extent, fettered by their training. Mal- 
thus, Quételet, and a few others, indeed, had turned their atten- 
tion seriously to a scientific study of social phenomena but their 
followers were few. 
Comte turned his attention to this subject holding that the 
same inductive methods in vogue in biology were, with some 
modification, applicable in sociology, viz., observation, experi- 
ment, and comparison, with the promise of a fourth method to 
be derived from biology, — since fulfilled in the so-called genetic 
method.!. Under experiment, Comte mentions only a study of 
pathological conditions, but despite Mill’s teaching concerning 
the inapplicability of this method in social investigations,? we 
have come to realize the possibility of arranging social conditions 
and forces by forethought much as does the worker in the physical 
or chemical laboratory, although as the phenomena are so much 
more complex, and the time required to try out the experiment is 
1 Positive Philosophy, ii, ch. II. 2 Logic, ch. VII. 
