Excerpt from Sociological Construction Lines: A Dissertation, Submitted to the Faculties of the Graduate Schools of Arts, Literature, and Science in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Sociology)
It is not the popular mind alone that is in uncertainty as to what sociology is. Even to the scientist devoted to the subject the name stands for a problem rather than for an achieved solution. The problem is, moreover, so involved, and it presents so many phases and reduces itself into so many subsidiary problems, that each sociologist addresses himself to a different phase of the whole, a different set of subsidiary problems involved in the total solution; and, as a rule, each is inclined to describe the study of sociology as being just the particular kind of work in which he is absorbed. An extreme illustration of this is the remark of a German scholar, already famous for contributions to the subject which he has embodied in lectures and articles. This man, on being asked what he regarded as the most important sociological books in the German language, answered: There are no books in the German language on sociology as I conceive it. One who surveys the various and contrasting beginnings that have thus far been made is ready to appreciate the words with which Professor Fairbanks begins his Introduction to S ociology’ Sociology is the name applied to a rather inchoate mass of materials which embodies our knowledge about society. That this mass of materials includes much that is of great practi cal importance, and that in connection with it there have been developed already some broadening and illuminating points of view, is beyond question. But these points of view are not only independent, but largely isolated and unrelated, and these mate rials are presented in a multiplicity of unreconciled half-systems. The time for complete systematizing is not yet. Is it therefore necessary for the student to plunge at random into the tangle, and wander in confusion; or may he hope to form some approximation to a general concept of the field of sociology?
As school-children drawing maps, we were taught to use con struction lines. A few salient points were located, and these were connected by lines which indicated vaguely the outline of the country to be studied. From these points the pencil began to trace the intricate windings of the shore, and with reference to these lines it located rivers, mountains, and cities. The student of soci ology cannot yet lay down a chart of the continent he explores, but he may attempt to form some general conceptions, to discern and state some truths with far-reaching implications, that will serve, like construction lines, to facilitate his progress toward the more accurate tracing of the outlines of this realm, and the com pleter discovery Of its particulars.
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