Sociology as an Art Form

The author's interest in sociology as an art form was recently by some reflections on ideas that are by common assent among the most distinctive that sociology has contributed to modern thought. The "mechanic arts" became, for several generations, the prime conception of everything scientific, placing their stamp upon the type of science done and respected at large. In art there had developed, by the end of the nineteenth century, the view that creation works through some inscrutable process called genius or inspiration, never through technique and experimental work. In truth, science and art have had a profoundly important cultural relationship for the greater part of the history of man. Eugene Rabinowitch, distinguished chemist and science editor, has written some words that might fittingly hang in every hall of learning. It is the simpler but more fundamental conclusion that in both art and science the same type of creative imagination works.