THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIOLOGY

A science which has only just come into existence necessarily has at the outset only an uncertain and ill-defined sense of the area of reality that it is about to approach, of its extent and its limits. It can gain a clearer picture only to the degree that it acquires a procedure to guide its research; and the heightened awareness of its subject matter that it obtains in this way is of the greatest importance. For the task of the scientist is the more secure the more orderly it becomes; and the more methodical it is, the more accurate is the account that he can render of the territory he is penetrating.

Sociology has reached the stage at which it is opportune to make every effort to bring about such an advance. If some reactionary critics, inadvertently influenced by the prejudice which always hinders the formation of a new science, reproach sociology for not knowing the precise subject-matter with which it intends to deal, they can be told that such ignorance is inevitable in the early phases of research, and that our science came into being only very recently. It must not be forgotten, especially in view of the popularity of sociology today, that fifteen years ago it would scarcely have been possible to enumerate as many as ten individuals who could, properly speaking, be called ‘sociologists’. We must add to this that it is asking too much of a science to define its subject-matter with excessive precision, for the part of reality that it intends to study is never precisely separated from others.