Not only such general geographical studies, but such social
interpretations as those above indicated have long been in progress:
witness the labours of whole schools of historians and critics, among
whom Montsquieu and his immediate following, or in more recent times
Buckle and Taine, are but the most prominent; witness the works of
geographers like Humboldt, Ritter, Reclus, or of developmental
technologists like Boucher de Perthes and regional economists like Le
Play. The main lines of a concrete and evolutionary sociology (or at
[Page: 66] least _sociography_) have thus been laid down for us; but the
task now before us, in our time, in such a society as this--and indeed
in such a paper as the present one--its that of extracting from all this
general teaching its essential scientific method, one everywhere latent
and implicit, but nowhere fully explicit, or at least adequately
systematised.
It is in fact only as we can agree upon some definite and orderly method
of description that our existing literature of social surveys can be
adequately compared or new ones co-operatively undertaken. Hence the
importance of discussions of scientific method such as those who have so
largely occupied our first volume. Yet, I submit, here lies the means of
escaping from these too abstract (and consequently too static)
presentments of the general methodology of social science into which
sociologists are constantly falling; and to which must be largely
ascribed the prevalent distaste for sociology so general in this
would-be practical-minded community in which we find ourselves, as
indeed also the comparative unattractiveness of our studies to the body
of specialist scientific workers, not even excepting those within what
we consider sociological fields.
The history of each science, be it mathematics or astronomy, botany,
zoology or geology, shows us that it is not enough to have the
intelligent observer, or even the interpretative thinker with his
personally expressed doctrine. This must be clearly crystallised into a
definite statement, method, proposition, "law" or theory, stated in
colourless impersonal form before it is capable of acceptance and
incorporation into the general body of science. But while astronomer and
geologist and naturalist can and do describe both the observational
results and their general conceptions in literary form, requiring from
the ordinary reader but the patience to master a few unfamiliar terms
and ideas, they also carry on their work by help of definite and orderly
technical methods, descriptive and comparative, analytic and synthetic.
These, as far as possible, have to be crystallised beyond their mere
verbal statement into formulae, into tabular and graphic presentments,
and thus not only acquire greater clearness of statement, but become
more and more active agencies of inquiry--in fact, become literal
_thinking-machines_. But while the mathematician has his notations and
his calculus, the geographer and geologist their maps, reliefs and
sections, the naturalist his orderly classificatory methods, it has been
the misfortune and delay of political economy, and no small cause of
that "notorious discord and sterility" with which Comte reproached it,
that [Page: 67] its cultivators have so commonly sought to dispense with
the employment of any definite scientific notations; while even its
avowed statisticians, in this country especially, have long resisted the
consistent use of graphic methods.
I submit, therefore, for discussion, as even more urgent and pressing
than that of the general and abstract methodology of the social
sciences, the problem of elaborating a concrete descriptive method
readily applicable to the study and comparison of human societies, to
cities therefore especially. To do justice to this subject, not only the
descriptive labours of anthropologists, but much of the literature of
sociology would have to be gone through from the "Tableau Economique" of
the Physiocratic School to the "Sociological Tables" of Mr. Spencer, and
still more fruitfully to more recent writers. Among these, besides here
recognising specially the work of Mr. Booth and its stimulus to younger
investigators, I would acknowledge the helpful and suggestive impulse
from the group of social geographers which has arisen from the
initiative of Le Play[7], and whose classification, especially in its
later forms[8], cannot but be of interest and value to everyone whose
thought on social questions is not afloat upon the ocean of the abstract
without chart or bearings.
[7] La Nomenclature Sociale (Extrait de La Revue, "La Science Sociale,"
Dec. 1886) Paris, Firmin-Diact, 1887.
[8] Demoulins, La Science Sociale d'apres F. Le Play 1882-1905;
Classification Sociale, "La Science Sociale," Jan. 1905.
Yet with all respect to each and all these classifications and methods,
indeed with cordially acknowledge personal obligation and indebtedness
to them from first to last, no one of these seems fully satisfactory for
the present purpose; and it is therefore needful to go into the matter
afresh for ourselves, though utilising these as fully as we can.