ABSTRACT
It’s only natural that a nascent science should draw on sciences that are already well established: sociology, for instance, on biology. It’s also only natural for a fledgling science to attempt to spread its wings and mark out its own territory. As a maturing discipline, sociology now finds itself at such a juncture; it is seeking to establish its own field by itself and for itself. This is a kind of egoism, a scientific individualism which – like all egoism, whether human or animal – is useful to an extent, but detrimental to the individual himself beyond a certain point. Biology and psychology have both exhibited this separatist tendency, an over-indulgence of which has driven them back to old assumptions of vitalism and of a misconstrued spiritualism.
