Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, December 1899: Vol. LVI, November, 1899 to April, 1900Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, December 1899: Vol. LVI, November, 1899 to April, 1900
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
To the further study of the psychological foundations of society
practically all the valuable work on fundamental social problems has
been given during the past ten years. Tarde has given us profound
studies of imitation and invention; Gumplowicz and Le Bon, of the
psychology of races and culture groups; Novicow, of the psychology of
conflict and toleration; Le Bon and Durkheim, of the psychology of
crowds, of co-operation, and of the division of labor; Baldwin, of the
psychology of the social unit--the _socius_.
Thus it appears that while sharp disagreements of opinion still exist
relative to the priority or the generality of one or another of these
psychic factors in the social process, discussion has focused about
the psychological phenomena themselves. There has been a progressive
limitation of the field and an increasing definiteness of conception
and hypothesis.
My own effort, if now I may be pardoned for referring to it, has been
to restrict the field yet further, and to make the problems of
sociology yet more specific. I have contended that these psychological
phenomena which have been seized upon for purposes of sociological
interpretation are still too vaguely conceived. They are often
disclosed to the inquirer in purely individual as well as in social
aspects. The lines of inquiry between the study of mind in general, of
mind as individual, and of mind as manifesting itself socially in the
concert or co-operation of a number of individual minds, have not been
drawn with sufficient precision. I have tried to show that the
psychological phenomena that Ward, Tarde, Gumplowicz, Novicow, Le Bon,
Durkheim, Baldwin, and others have so admirably analyzed as psychic
factors of society are social when, and only when, they have certain
coefficients, namely: (1) The coefficient of resemblance--that is, a
fundamental similarity of individuals to one another underlying and,
on the whole, dominating their innumerable differences; (2) the
coefficient of awareness or consciousness of resemblance--that is to
say, certain feelings, perceptions, or thoughts of resemblance, which
give rise to varied prejudices and preferences that facilitate or
prevent effective co-operation. Whether this contention of mine will
prevail, whether there will ultimately be a general agreement among
sociologists that these coefficients of resemblance and consciousness
of kind are the true _differentia_ of social phenomena, time and
further research must determine.
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