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
There can be no possible doubt of the answer that must be made to
these questions. Conceptions and methods are in as perfect accord as
can be discovered in any branch of science. The merest glance over the
field of social statistics shows that, for the most part, they record
and classify phenomena that are essentially psychological. In working
from the general theory of evolution through the biological
parallelism down to psychological premises, analytical sociology has
been doing in one way precisely what statistics have been doing in
another. The moment we pass from statistics of density and
distribution of population we find ourselves dealing next with groups
of facts that are biological (the facts, namely, of distribution
according to sex and age periods), through facts that are partly
biological and partly psychological in character (the facts, namely,
of nationality), and then, leaving these behind, we deal henceforth
entirely with facts that belong to the mental and moral categories. To
name them would be only to repeat the categories already enumerated:
the statistics of intelligence, industry, and moral character, of
emotional or rational social action, of various forms of organization
for the achievement of as many different purposes, and of the
development of the conscious personality of man as a result of his
social relations and activities.
Not only is this true, but the further interesting fact may be
discovered that social statistics of every category employed or known
are based upon a frank recognition of that coefficient of resemblance,
physical or mental, which I have contended is a mark of social
phenomena. The first step in statistical tabulation is classification,
and classification invariably starts from an assumption of real or
supposed resemblance. Not to dwell on such fundamental distinctions as
those of color, race, and nationality, we encounter the more special
resemblances of agreement in religious belief, agreement in industrial
preference, agreement in political conviction (as shown in election
returns), similar susceptibility to emotionalism, similar capacities
for rational comprehension, similar imperfections of nature, which
result in lives of crime or pauperism. Remove from social statistics
this postulate that blood kinship or mental resemblance between one
social unit and another is the basis of social phenomena, and the
statistics themselves would cease to exist.
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