CHAPTER XIII 
INVENTION AND PRODUCTION (contTINvED) 
Tuomas N. Carver (1865-_—s+) 
The Super-Group 
Wits Professor Carver the chief function of sociology is to work 
out a consistent and thorough-going theory of social progress and 
its only justification is social amelioration! It is thus a social 
philosophy. To the methods of sociological investigation out- 
lined by Comte he adds a fifth, viz., the study of social forces now 
at work, and holds that instead of interpreting present events 
solely in the light of historical analyses the more effective method 
is to interpret both the present and the past by an analysis of 
forces now at work. 
Two preliminary assumptions are made: first, that this is a 
rational universe, — a cosmos rather than a chaos; and second, 
that life is a good thing; i.e., that life is better than death. If 
life is a good thing, then more life is a better thing. He goes a 
step further in The Religion Worth Having, and assumes that 
this is God’s world and that the laws of the universe are God’s 
laws. From a religious point of view it is necessary to be obe- 
dient to the will of God, but this calls for an understanding of 
that will as revealed in the cosmic process. 
Professor Carver does not stop with mere abundance of life as 
the goal of the cosmic process, but emphasizes quality; as a neo- 
Darwinian, however, he believes that quality can be secured only 
by a process analogous to that which prevails in biological 
evolution, i.e., superabundance of life, variations, struggle for 
existence, elimination of the ill-adapted and inheritance of 
adaptive qualities, a process leading gradually to the production 
of new and higher species, — higher, that is, because better 
adapted to life conditions. As the cosmic process, according to 
1 Sociology and Social Progress, Introduction. 
245 
