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Bibliographical Note
Ad Chapter I: “Epistemological observations on sociological thought”
Philosophical orientation occurs in the early sociological schools of Comte, Spencer and Ward, either in terms of a philosophically supported value system or by partial or entire acceptance of contemporary evolutionary theory. A more direct epistemological analysis underlies most early German sociology, especially in the case of Max Weber and Georg Simmel. Other schools, like those of von Wiese, Wundt and Freyer, are psychological in orientation while a considerable segment of German sociology was a continuation of — or a reaction against economic theory (Sombart, Oppenheimer, and, to some extent, Tönnies). German sociology of knowledge (Max Scheler, Mannheim) contains perhaps the clearest epistemological analysis which culminated in Scheler’s “Philosophic anthropology” as an effort to reconcile philosophy, psychology, biology and sociology in one system.
In French sociology, it is, of course, Durkheim and his school who developed a specific epistemological attitude which comes close to a neo-Kantian position.
The metaphysical schools of sociology (like universalism) are based upon a simplistic epistemology and did not really deal with the problem.
In American sociology, Talcott Parsons and Robert Merton form the bridge to European sociological thinking. The position of Parsons contains strong neo-Kantian elements and is more positive about the epistemological position of sociology than Scheler who was under the influence of pragmatism. Scheler, in this respect, stands in the same relation to American thought as Parsons to European.
Pragmatism and behaviorism seem to be at the basis of most American sociological writing, with an admixture of some elements from “Gestalt” -psychology. The increasing use of mathematical formulations (Dodd, Lundberg) creates new problems, however, as this position involves the objective validity of mathematical formulations which sometimes seem to tend toward reification of theories. This point may enter the center of theoretical controversy.
Social anthropology has tended toward simplification of the theoretical position of social analysis by accepting a number of the tenets of physiological psychology, without registering the philosophical objections to a simplification of the epistemological approach. The divergence between the various viewpoints seems to be widening, and it was the purpose of this article to formulate some of the basic problems which emerge from the position of the different schools.
Ad Chapter II: “The multiplicity of the social sciences”
This article attempts to apply the attitude, evolved by contemporary sociology of knowledge, to sociology itself. Occupation with the relation to other sciences was relatively strong in the early stages of sociology and found a very elucidating expose in Paul Barth “Geschichte der Philosophie als Sociologie”. Harry Elmer Barnes and Howard Becker, in their various writings, contributed a great deal to this problem by their historical treatment of the emergence of sociology, an approach which seems to have become a rather neglected one. They also show a relation between science and class ideologies, a point which Parsons stressed in his early writings on economic theory. There seems no need to point to the writings of Max Weber, Troeltsch and Tawney while in economic theory the institutionalists and the historical school created an extensive body of literature on this topic.
Ad Chapter III: “Observations on sociological theory”
E. Cassirer’s “Geschichte des Erkenntnisproblems” formed the stimulus to this article which tries to state the problem of the creation of theory in regard to social facts in its simplest terms. Bertrand Russell and A N. Whitehead deal very convincingly with the relation between exact and social theory although in sociology itself this problem seems to be seen occasionally in terms of an overly unified interpretation of the exact sciences. Scheler’s distinction of various forms of knowledge was used in order to investigate in how far the idea of levels of thought might prove helpful. Of course, Plato’s entire social philosophy is based on a comparable viewpoint and establishes a clear relation between the social and the psychological. However, it seems that Plato’s analysis of this relation is frequently held to be less valid because it was arrived at by an “idealistic” philosophy. Whether the relation between observation and concept is more clearly analyzed by empirical than by idealistic philosophy is at best a dubious point, and there is, as yet, no convincing psychological explanation of this relationship. Is is attempted in these essays to show that the relationship varies with different cultural stages.
Ad Chapter IV: “The philosophic anthropology of Max Scheler”
Max Scheler: “Die Wissensformen und die Gesellschaft”, Leipsic, 1926.
Max Scheler: “Versuche zu einer Sociologie des Wissens”, Munich, 1924.
Max Scheler: “Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos”, Darmstadt, 1928.
Max Scheler: “Zur Soziologie und Weltanschauungslehre”, 4 vol., Leipsic 1922.
Max Scheler: “Wesen und Formen der Sympathie”, Bonn.
Ad Chapter V and VI
The ultimate unit of social observation is generally defined in social theory but has been most clearly related to historical social forms by Toynbee. Toynbee also furnished once more a dynamic theory of society which adds a dimension to sociological and social anthropological theories which are recently inclined toward more static interpretations. The refusal by some anthropological theories to accept the theory of evolution has weakened the dynamic aspects of social theory.
Thinking in terms of stages runs from Vico to Sorokin but the relation to the organic bases of those stages has proved a point of difficulty as psychological theory seems to run contrary to the formulation of these possibilities, at least in its form of social psychology.
The purpose of this article was to investigate whether the idea of different “psychic reaction-levels” might contribute to the solution of this question. As this matter is an extremely complex one, it was presented in an over-simplified form and purely as a “logical hypothesis” with little or no empirical foundation, not out of disregard for an empirical approach, but purely from a lack of material that investigates this possibility.
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© 1952 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Landheer, B. (1952). Bibliographical Note. In: Mind and Society. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-6093-5_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-6093-5_7
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