A history of social thought

by Emory S. Bogardus

The ancient makers of social proverbs crystallized what they had individually observed many times to be true, or what they had heard repeated on many occasions as being true. Such methods were based on observation and generalization, carelessly used. Moreover, the data at the command of the makers of social proverbs were very limited.

The Hebrew prophets, fired by exalted ideas concerning the nature of Jehovah, insisted upon a practical application of these ideas to the daily life of the people of their time. When they perceived that the actions and living conditions of the people fell far below the implications of the pattern-ideas for which the name of Jehovah stood, they vehemently proclaimed definite social ideals, and condemned all who hindered the realization of these ideals. This method of creating social thought is noteworthy because of the religious dynamic behind it, and because of the social pattern-ideas which it produced.

Plato and Aristotle were pioneer social philosophers who took cosmic views of life. One followed the method of abstract reasoning and centered his thought in a world of Ideas; the other viewed life pragmatically, employing a method of empirical tests. While sociology will always have a place for methods which interpret the daily facts of individual and social experience in their relationships to the whole human society and to the universe, it will insist that as large a body of societary data as possible be gathered together before philosophic sociology speaks positively.

In the teachings of Jesus a rare insight to human nature is manifested. Jesus studied individuals as individuals and, perceiving their selfish natures, proclaimed a remedy in an inner transformation through consecration to objective factors, such as persons and ideals. Jesus was peculiarly happy in his method of moving among all classes of people, of studying their needs, and of testing in practice his social principles. While his acquaintance with human life was limited to small groups of one race, he sought universal as well as particular human tendencies. His method included an absolutely unselfish spirit, a search for the truth, a broad viewpoint—all of which are thoroughly scientific.

The Utopia of Sir Thomas More, preceded to be sure by Plato’s Republic, introduced another social thought method. The utopian formula consists in setting forth a set of ideals which presumably are distinctly in advance of current standards. The method of arriving at utopian ideas is largely through the use of the imagination. Standards are postulated so far in advance of current conditions as to make them of little value. Utopian social thought, however, does have some scientific merit. The imagination may be used in revealing reality to otherwise blind individuals. A utopian thought may startle a selfish individual out of a part of his selfishness. A utopian idea possesses the power which is inherent in indirect suggestion; it may arouse without antagonizing.

In the approach to the social question through an analysis of the natural rights of the individual, the seventeenth and eighteenth social writers fell into a deductive and a priori procedure which led them far astray. Like the theory of individual rights, the correlative doctrine of the social contract contained more error than truth.

The method of positivism, ordinarily connected with the writings of Comte, essayed a scientific approach to the social question. It insisted upon accuracy, induction, and a right emphasis upon sequence and co-existence. But positivism, even in the hands of its exponents, became deductive and philosophic. It promised well scientifically, but fell into nearly all the errors which it condemned. It was, however, a factor in producing the nineteenth century humanitarianism.

The organic analogy method of studying human society attracted widespread attention, appealed strongly to the imagination even of scholars, but resulted in findings of negligible value. The parallelisms between an organism and society proved to be scientifically valueless, except as they revealed some of the connections between organic volution and social evolution. They created a considerable vocabulary of bio-social terminology which has been more of a hindrance than a help in social thinking.

The psychical approach to the study of societary life, introduced by Lester F. Ward, and made scientific by the findings of inductive and behavioristic psychology, has proved thus far to be the best method of understanding the social process and of arriving at a statement of sociological laws. This method has revealed human life as a series of social conflicts and co-operations, and of forms of social control designed to regulate individuals for selfish and unselfish group purposes. An explanation of the more important phases of the psychical methodology has been presented in several chapters of this volume.

The individual rights doctrine, the social contract theories, the concept of positivism, and the organic analogies belong to the unscientific age in sociological methodology. In the main these sets of social theories were philosophic, deductive, a priori, and argumentative. They were based chiefly on opinions, positivism alone leaning to observation and induction but failing to live up to its promises. On the other hand, recent decades have been marked by the rise of scientific methods in sociology, attention has been centered on the social process, and particularly on the psychical processes of which the social process is an elaboration. Although he possessed an entirely inadequate knowledge of psychology, Lester F. Ward laid the foundations of modern sociology when he insisted that society is a psychical affair, capable of mastering itself. As a result of this contribution to method, not by a psychologist but by a paleontologist, social thought moved forward into the field of scientific sociology.