The principles of social science, like the principles of engineering, are matters of profound concern to those who are compelled to depend for health and livelihood on the outcome of a social experiment. The social scientist studies society as the natural scientist studies nature, by examining the social forms, the social forces, the ways of handling or of administering these forces, and the means of making social improvements. The social scientist, like the scientist working in any other field, is concerned with making those additions to knowledge which will prove of the greatest ultimate advantage to the human race.
The principles of social activity are not yet so well known as those of astronomy, physics, mechanics or biology, but they operate none the less surely. Until these principles are understood, and until men plan their activities in relation to them, there will be no possibility of a rationally organized and wisely managed society. The physicist who planned a pump on the supposition that water is always liquid in form would get no farther than the social scientist who advocated social changes on the theory that the only motive that animated mankind was the economic one.
Mankind is not wholly ignorant of the principles underlying social structure and social activities. Philosophers and statesmen worked over them in the ancient world. Within the past two centuries a flood of books and pamphlets has appeared dealing with social organization. To be sure, most of these publications have been of a political nature, but the effort was made none the less to understand society and its workings. The investigations, analyses, comparisons and conclusions are formulating themselves gradually into certain well-defined social laws, which men recognize as essential factors in social thinking.
Some of the more important among these social laws or principles which have been determined by the painful processes of trial and error are those relating to the manner in which the structure of society is built up. Society is not a collection of people, in the sense that a basket of eggs is a collection of eggs. Quite the contrary, society is a structure formed through the association of individuals and of groups having some common interests and some co-operative functions or activities. A family, for example, consists of a number of persons, usually connected by blood ties, living together in a common dwelling. A chamber of commerce consists of individuals, firms and corporations, doing business in one locality, and all concerned with the maintenance of certain property rights. The British Miners Federation is composed of local and of district organizations, which are built up around collieries, towns, and coal deposits. The local union is composed of individual mine workers. The district organization is composed of a number of locals in the same field. The federation is composed of these lesser organizations. No matter which one of the many forms of human association is examined, the same thing will be found true. Each social group is composed either of individuals or of lesser social groups which have certain common interests and certain co-operative activities, and which band themselves together in response to their interests and in pursuance of these activities. It is this organic structure of society to which Hobson applies the phrase "the federal units which society presents." ("Work and Wealth." J.A. Hobson. Macmillan. 1914. p. vi.)
Among primitive peoples who have simple forms of social organization, each individual is connected with some association like the clan or tribe which is state, church and family, all in one. The stories of the Jewish patriarchs are good illustrations of this stage in social evolution. In advanced and complex societies, however, each individual belongs to a number of groups—to a town, a factory, a school, a home, a political party, a fraternal order, a church. In complex societies these groups are united to form the whole social structure. The individual belongs to society, therefore, because he belongs to one or more of the groups composing society, and his membership in society is dependent upon his membership in a social group.
Without making too much of the comparison between a living organism, like the human body, and a society, the similarities between the two are striking. The human body consists of various systems, such as the circulatory system, the nervous system, the digestive system. Each of these systems is composed of many parts, having separate functions to perform. The circulatory system, for example, consists of the heart, veins, arteries, capillaries, the blood, etc. These various parts of each system are in their turn made up of different kinds of tissue. The heart is a complicated organ consisting of muscle tissue, nerve fibers, blood vessels, etc. Muscles, nerves and blood vessels are in their turn composed of living cells, each of which contains the mechanism of a life cycle. Among the unit cells, the various tissues, organs and systems of the body, there is a working harmony. The whole complex machine functions in unison. If one of the organs fails to do its work,—if the heart fails to pump blood or if the lungs fail to inhale oxygen,—the whole body ceases to function or "dies."
Throughout the series, from the single cell to the entire organism, the human body is built up compositely. This method of composite structure holds equally true in the composition of modern society.
A modern society or community consists of various systems, such as the educational system, the economic system, the political system. Each of these systems is, in its turn, composed of institutions. Thus, for example, the educational system consists of the common schools, the high schools, the normal and professional schools and universities, the special schools, and so on. Each city school system is a going concern with its pupils, teachers, officials, school buildings, textbooks, courses of study. Each school building, each class room, each group of pupils, is a social unit, composed either of individuals or of groups. Like the single cell of the human body, the individual pupil is a living organism, and it is out of a multitude of such organisms variously grouped that school systems are built.
The social machinery, like the machinery of the body, must work smoothly, otherwise misery will be the inevitable result. If the educational or the economic life of a community breaks down, the whole community suffers, as does the body through the failure of an important organ. If the stoppage is significant enough, as for example, a stoppage of the economic machinery like that experienced by central Europe since 1919, the social organism "dies,"—that is, it is resolved into its constituent elements, some of which may disappear.
Those who object to the comparison between society and a living organism like the body, find more satisfaction in likening the social machine to an automobile, with its self-starter, its ignition system, its lighting system, its steering gear, its driving mechanism. Each of the systems is in turn composed of parts. Each part is made of wood, iron, copper, rubber, and these materials are, in turn, composed of molecules and atoms in certain combination. The automobile is not self-acting, like the body or like society, but the failure of one of its essential parts like the ignition system, means the failure of the whole machine.