Introduction to the Science of Sociology — John Shaqi
Introduction to the Science of SociologyPark, Robert Ezra
General
Introduction to the Science of Sociology
Park, Robert Ezra
Sociology
Of such a society as this it may indeed be said, that it "exists for the
benefit of its members, not its members for the benefit of society. It
has ever to be remembered that great as may be the efforts made for the
prosperity of the body politic, yet the claims of the body politic are
nothing in themselves, and become something only in so far as they
embody the claims of its component individuals."[30]
In other words, the social organism, as Spencer sees it, exists not for
itself but for the benefit of the separate organs of which it is
composed, whereas, in the case of biological organism the situation is
reversed. There the parts manifestly exist for the whole and not the
whole for the parts.
Spencer explains this paradoxical conclusion by the reflection that in
social organisms sentience is not localized as it is in biological
organisms. This is, in fact, the cardinal difference between the two.
There is no _social sensorium_.
In the one (the individual), consciousness is concentrated in a
small part of the aggregate. In the other (society), it is
diffused throughout the aggregate: all the units possess the
capacities for happiness and misery, if not in equal degrees,
still in degrees that approximate. As then, there is no social
sensorium, the welfare of the aggregate, considered apart from
that of the units, is not an end to be sought. The society
exists for the benefit of its members; not its members for the
benefit of the society.[31]
The point is that society, _as distinct from the individuals_ who
compose it, has no apparatus for feeling pain or pleasure. There are no
_social_ sensations. Perceptions and mental imagery are individual and
not social phenomena. Society lives, so to speak, only in its separate
organs or members, and each of these organs has its own brain and organ
of control which gives it, among other things, the power of independent
locomotion. This is what is meant when society is described as a
collectivity.
VI. SOCIAL CONTROL AND SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT
The fundamental problem which Spencer's paradox raises is that of social
control. How does a mere collection of individuals succeed in acting in
a corporate and consistent way? How in the case of specific types of
social group, for example an animal herd, a boys' gang, or a political
party, does the group control its individual members; the whole dominate
the parts? What are the specific _sociological_ differences between
plant and animal communities and human society? What kind of differences
are _sociological differences_, and what do we mean in general by the
expression "sociological" anyway?
Since Spencer's essay on the social organism was published in 1860,[32]
this problem and these questions, in one form or another, have largely
absorbed the theoretical interest of students of society. The attempts
to answer them may be said to have created the existing schools into
which sociologists are divided.
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