The social survey is one of the most important sources today of sound social thinking. By it, large quantities of social facts are being collected. Urban and rural surveys, specific and general surveys alike, are affording the best bases at the present time for inductive social thinking. Some of these results have been indicated in a preceding chapter upon the contributions of applied sociology.
The nature of the classificatory method has already been indicated in this treatise. The Greeks classified the various fields of knowledge under three heads: physics, ethics, and politics. Francis Bacon classified knowledge according to his understanding of mental operations. He divided mental processes into three, namely, feeling, memory, reasoning; and made a corresponding division of knowledge into art, history, and science. Auguste Comte classified the social elements into four groups: the industrial, the esthetic, the scientific, and the philosophical (previsional). His hierarchal classification of the sciences into mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, and sociology has been discussed in an earlier chapter.
Guillaume de Greef may be considered the best exponent of the classificatory method. De Greef accepted Comte’s hierarchy of the sciences with its basic principles of decreasing generality and increasing dependence of parts, assented to Spencer’s evolutionary dictum of increasing coherence and heterogeneity, and added his own concept of volitional contractualism.
De Greef argued that social progress is characterized by an increasing degree of volitional activity and freedom. This volitionalism is the basis of rational social control. The telic factors, however, are not well developed by de Greef. His social thought rests upon a certain logical but inaccurate classification of the social elements.
The basis of this classification is increasing volitionalism and particularism. De Greef gives the following classification: economic, industrial, genetic, artistic, scientific, moral, juridical, and political. In holding that the economic elements in society represent the least volitionalism, and the political the most volitional activity, with graded degrees of volitional activities represented by the intermediate factors, the weakness of de Greef’s analysis becomes evident. While an improvement over Comte’s classification and superior to Spencer’s mechanistic order, de Greef’s contribution possesses only a relative degree of logical merit. It is far from being objectively correct, and is indicative of the difficulties in the way of classifying social elements in an evolutionary or filial order. There is no doubt but that any classification of merit would have to be arranged according to some correlative plan, which would serve the purposes of an exhibit but would not be of much scientific value. Moreover, the classifications that are most useful are those classifications of societary forces; these are psychical in nature and have been treated in foregoing chapters.
De Greef perceived the importance of the principle of socialization. He emphasized the importance of a “we” feeling in societary life. His social unit is the primitive family. In the evolution from the primitive family and state, the evidence of progress is the degree of “togetherness” that has been developed. De Greef advanced the idea that there is an increasing degree of contractualism and hence of freedom in society. De Greef’s work may be taken as the best attempt to carry Comte’s classification of the sciences to a logical conclusion by furnishing a classification of the elements which function in the field of the “highest” science of all, namely, sociology.
At this point and in concluding, the methodology of Albion W. Small will be considered. Professor Small’s other contributions to sociological thought have been indicated at the proper places in earlier chapters. The correct method for pursuing sociological analyses is to treat human society in terms of process. The main current in all sound sociological study is the social process. The significant test of progress in this social process is achievement.[XXVII-2] According to Professor Small’s classification, there are six main phases of social progress, namely:
1. Achievement in promoting health,
2. Achievement in harmonizing human relations,
3. Achievement in producing wealth,