ABSTRACT
Sociology is the profession of studying and teaching about what happens when at least two persons are in a position to influence one another. I emphasize the profession because all of us, as men, study the subject, though not all professionally. As a profession, sociology is quite old: Auguste Comte gave it its name more than a hundred years ago. It is also a profession that is trying to become a science, but in this regard—the degree of its progress toward scientific status—it is still quite young. Fifty years ago the great French mathematician Henri Poincaré called it the science with most methods and fewest results. If, quite properly, one means by the results of a science general statements that hold true in a first approximation in a variety of circumstances, Poincaré would still be right today. There are still no general statements about social behavior that most sociologists agree are true. Of this fact no sociologist talking about the contribution his profession may make to management can remind you too strongly. There are sociologists who will tell you, wholly sincerely, that they command an established science, capable (if given, of course, quite a little more money) of curing the ills of a troubled world. They are utterly wrong, and in my view the future of sociology can only suffer from such overselling. Even if we had the established knowledge, which we do not, the problem of applying it would remain. Atoms cannot read physics, but men, perhaps to their advantage, can read sociology, judge what the sociologists plan to get them to do, and make their arrangements accordingly. Thus the polls’ prediction of voters’ behavior is always, in some measure, defeated by the voters’ ability to read the polls.
