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Sociology as a Specialized Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

C. A. Dawson*
Affiliation:
McGill University
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Extract

Comte, writing a century ago, claimed that in human affairs we were just entering the scientific stage. Already the physical sciences had made an auspicious beginning. They have made spectacular advances since Comte's pronouncement. Nevertheless, extensive areas in the physical sciences remain to be explored. Still wider areas in the domain of the social sciences await systematic investigation and precise analysis. The need for scientific advances as a means of meeting recurring crises in human affairs seems more necessary than in the days of Comte. It is quite evident today that we have greater sophistication, more extensive questioning, and a more marked social self-consciousness. The word scientific, widely and loosely used, seems to symbolize the temper of our age.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1940

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References

1 Ginsberg, Benjamin in Encyclopaedia of Social Sciences, vol. XIII, p. 592.Google Scholar

2 Note particularly statements made by Professors Ginsberg, , Mannheim, , and a number of others in The Social Sciences (London, 1936).Google Scholar

3 Rumney, J., Science of Society (London, 1938), pp. 1213.Google Scholar

4 See Sociological Review, vol. I, p. 8.Google Scholar

5 Gee, Wilson (ed.), Research in the Social Sciences (New York, 1929), p. 265.Google Scholar

6 Ogburn, W. F. and Goldenweiser, A. (eds.), The Social Sciences and Their Interrelations (Boston, 1927), p. 1.Google Scholar

7 Weber, Max, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie, 3 vols. (Tübingen, 1920-1).Google Scholar Weber's, ideas are discussed in Talcott Parson's Structure of Social Action (New York, 1937), part III.Google Scholar

8 Gee, (ed.), Research in the Social Sciences, pp. 34.Google Scholar

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10 Park, R. E. (ed.), Principles of Sociology (New York, 1939), p. 294.Google Scholar

11 The former (Washington, 1934) deals with an outlying community in Mexico and the latter (Chicago, 1939) is a study of an outlying community in the province of Quebec, Canada.

12 Spykman, N. J., The Social Theory of Georg Simmel (Chicago, 1925).Google Scholar

13 One of the monographs in the series Recent Trends in the United States (New York, 1933).Google Scholar

14 The circulation of metropolitan daily newspapers was used as one of the indices marking the circumference of each metropolitan region. On the periphery appear papers from other metropolitan centres. There is some overlapping along this outer boundary where the circulation from no one metropolis is predominant.

15 R. E. L. Faris and H. W. Dunham (Chicago, 1939).

16 Ibid., p. x.

17 W. I. Thomas and F. Znaniecki (New York, 1927).

18 R. E. Park and H. A. Miller (New York, 1921).

19 Ethnic Communities in Western Canada, vol. VII (“Canadian Frontiers of Settlement,” ed. by Mackintosh, W. A. and Joerg, W. L. G., Toronto, 1938).Google Scholar