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The argument here suggested is not intended to do more than to point out the significance of the group concept for social science in general. The details of the scheme are beyond the limits of this paper. It should be brought out, however, that the implication of the group concept does not mean the abolition of specialization on the one hand, nor the denial of a scientific method on the other hand. Both are essential for social science.

The group concept has further significance for sociology in particular, since, with the surrender of its older claims to suzerainty, it must take its place along with the other social techniques as a co-ordinating viewpoint. It thus becomes a way of thinking, a point of view from which the common social process is observed and analyzed. The group concept, then, furnishes the basis upon which it establishes its claim. Small expresses this opinion in his definition of sociology where he describes it as that "variant among the social science techniques which proceeds from the perception that all human phenomena are functions of groups." The analysis of group relations, the group concept, is the only apparent distinct contribution of sociology, and is its justification for a claim to rank as one of the techniques. As was pointed out in the review of Small's work, he has here, it seems, made a distinct contribution to sociology in his suggestion of the group con

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1 Dr. Small's The Meaning of Social Science may be given as a detailed description of the method whereby specialization and co-ordination may be achieved. The very conception of a division of labor implies work upon a unified problem. The scientific method, i.e., observation, experimentation, testing, hypothesis, etc., is common to all the sciences. Karl Pearson has an interesting observation on the unity of science: "The reader may perhaps feel that I am laying stress upon method at the expense of material content. Now this is the peculiarity of scientific method, that when once it has become a habit of mind, that mind converts all facts whatsoever into science. The field of science is unlimited; its material is endless, every group of natural phenomena, every phase of social life, every stage of past or present development is material of science. The unity of all science consists alone in its method, not in its material. The man who classifies facts of any kind whatever, who sees their mutual relation and describes their sequences, is applying the scientific method and is a man of science. The facts may belong to the past history of mankind, to the social statistics of our great cities, to the atmosphere of the most distant stars, to the digestive organs of a worm or to the life of a scarcely visible bacillus. It is not the facts themselves which make science, but the method by which they are dealt with.”—The Grammar of Science, Part I, 12.

2 Notes from unpublished lectures.

cept as the central proposition upon which sociology may rest its case. It offers the most encouraging prospect for the dissolution of the older crudities of separatism in social science and for a positive statement of the meaning and place of sociology in American thought.

The significance of the group concept for the other social sciences may be indicated by a brief reference to some of the evidences of the use of concept by occasional expressing of some modern writers in some of those fields. The change may be suggested by pointing to the growing recognition of the social factor in each of the several fields of labor which have evolved in American thought. In economics, history, psychology, pedagogy, theology, ethics, and jurisprudence this special sociological concept is beginning to modify the whole outlook. In.some of these branches the change that has resulted from the use of the group concept has been such as to undermine the whole of the structure. In others it has just begun and its end is not yet seen. A sociological approach in other words, to these various divisions of labor is far-reaching in its effects. Without exception they were built up under the influence of individualistic and metaphysical conceptions. They still, for the most part, bear unmistakable evidences of their origin. The coming of a social hypothesis means, as Merz suggested, the rewriting and reconstruction of economic theory, of history, psychology, theology, ethics, and all the rest. We may note, now, some of the beginnings of such reconstructions. They will recall the parallel movement in social practice which was sketched in the first chapter.

Among those sciences which have to do with human behavior, probably none has shown such a thoroughgoing reconstruction as psychology. We have had occasion above to refer to some of the changes that have taken place. Without attempting to go into detail or to repeat other statements, one may epitomize the movement by referring to it as the coming of social psychology. As a representative of the latter movement and its significance one may cite Baldwin. A layman could not pretend to predict what the final result will be, but the shift away from the older individualistic basis is unmistakable. Indeed, it seems that among the ranks of

the psychologists there are those who find no place for individual psychology at all. Baldwin summarizes the transition in psychology thus: "For psychologists and logicians the problem now is to find any knowledge that is psychologically private, not to find knowledge that is common and public. . . . . The result is that the subjectivistic theories of knowledge, like the individualistic theories of political science, are soon to be laid away in the attics where old intellectual furniture is stored." The behaviorist movement, as has been mentioned, is a part of the transition movement. Dewey, in speaking of the behaviorist movement in psychology, says: "From the point of view of behavior all psychology is either biological or social psychology, and if it still be true that man is not only an animal but a social animal, the two cannot be dissevered when we deal with man." With the further details of this change we are not concerned; we are only to point out that such a change has taken place, and that current psychology is still in a state of confusion attendant upon a transition period.3 Social psychology is a corollary of the group concept in the field of psychology. Its significance is apparent.

Among the social sciences no division showed a clearer example of the older individualistic conceptions than political economy, particularly in its classical form. The group hypothesis or group conception was as completely ignored or denied in the classical school as it is possible to do. The individual was assumed as a given entity, which was supreme both in economic theory and practice. At most, social entanglements were but necessary ills and superficial interferences which had to be taken account of as a practical fact. Founded and formulated largely before an adequate psychology of any kind existed, before a social psychology

I Darwin and the Humanties, p. 75.

2 "The Need for Social Psychology," Psychological Review, XXIV, 266.

3 Reference cannot be made to the large volume of literature bearing on the point. Attention may be called again to: Ellwood, "Objectivism in Sociology," American Journal of Sociology, XXII, 289; Bernard, "The Objective Viewpoint in Sociology," ibid., XXV, 298; Weiss, "Relation between Structural and Behavior Psychology," Psychological Review, XXIV, 301, and "Relation Between Functional and Behavior Psychology," ibid., 353; Watson, "Psychology and Behavior," Psychological Review, XX, 150; Angell, "Behavior as a Category of Psychology," ibid., XX, 255

was more than hinted at, and before an adequate development of a scientific method, it is not surprising that economics grew up without showing the results of these later developments. Its philosophy was individualistic, its method deductive. From those early characteristics it has not yet recovered completely. This is true even in America, where other influences early entered in to modify the harshness of political economy as it developed in England prior to John Stuart Mill' who attempted to reform the subject, and place it on more modern bases. From the rigid individualism of the classical school up to the more advanced economists of America is a period of considerable progress. The limits of this paper forbid any pretension to record the changes that have taken place, or, indeed, to do more than call attention to some of the earlier limitations of the classical school. The difference in economic life which prevailed in this country, the influence of German thought since 1870, the infiltration of the influence of the Austrian school, and finally the neo-classical synthesis of Marshall, tended to give economics an evolutionary trend toward a theoretical basis which is more in accordance with the results arrived at in other social sciences. Both social theory, as developed by other social sciences, and social evolution, as shown by the practical development of American industry, trade, and life in general, have made necessary a movement in economic thought toward a diluted social hypothesis. Some passages from Ely may serve to illustrate the difference between the philosophy which characterized the older economy and that of the new: "The attempt of the classical economists to isolate an 'economic man' ruled entirely by an enlightened self-interest and unaffected by political, ethical, and humanitarian impulses, is recognized to have been a mistake." As contrasted with this description of the classical school modern economics recognizes social relationships as important: "Our science then is interested in man in his relations to others, and not

"The reaction against English economists, it is interesting to note, began earlier in the United States than in England or Germany."-Ely, Outlines of Economics, p. 672. "Almost from the beginning the peculiar environmental conditions met with in America have given a characteristic set of tendencies to American economics." -Haney, History of Economic Thought, p. 511.

2 Outlines of Economics, p. 675.

in man by himself. Moreover, as a science which studies the present in order that it may predict and prepare for the future, and discovering that interdependence is the law of progress, it must not hesitate to shape its principles with reference to a solidarity which shall grow more rather than less, stronger rather than weaker."

One must recognize then that current economic theory has made considerable advance from the stricter classical school of the first half of the nineteenth century. "Economists are realizing the interrelation of things; more and more the quest for absolute law of causation is modified by a knowledge that things move in circles and mutually determine one another as do supply, demand, and price." While admitting the force of this statement with all that it implies in theory and practice, one must still come to the conclusion that current economic theory has not yet been penetrated very deeply with the conclusions arrived at by contemporary social psychology, with its emphasis upon the significance of the group in the formation and control of men. Economic theory in America today is still fundamentally individualistic; it still conceives mind as a datum rather than as a social product; it still assumes the wants of the individual as given and relatively fixed; it still assumes the medieval doctrine of the freedom of the will and choice; it still interprets freedom in the negative sense as absence of restraint and interference; it still emphasizes unduly "individual initiative" and individual struggle for existence and tends to ignore the correlative fact of co-operation or group activity. In a word, contemporary economics still employs an antiquated psychology in the solution of all its problems. Once a grasp of group concept with its psychological implications is obtained, it will mean the rewriting of all economic theory, in so far as it has not already been done. The transformation for economics will be as that of psychology has been.

There have appeared some current evidences of the movement to reconstruct economic theory in the light of the group concep

1 Outlines of Economics, p. 6. Haney, History of Economic Thought, p. 549. › Merely as an illustration one might cite Carver's Principles of Political Economy (1919) as an exhibit of all these shortcomings.

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