ABSTRACT
THE PLACE OF SOCIOLOGY AMONG THE SCIENCES.
We may divide these latter sciences into two classes. On the one hand there are sciences which are at least as generic or universal in character as sociology and yet seem to occupy much of the same ground. These are the sciences of ethics and psychology, and the problem of their relation to sociology is most significant. On the other hand there are special social sciences, sciences dealing with special kinds of social fact, and, therefore, clearly less general than the science of community as a whole. We must arbitrate here between the claims of
The purposes men pursue, and in the pursuit of which they build associations, are most numerous and complex, but they can be reduced under a limited number of categories. To definite kinds of purpose correspond definite forms of association, and these in turn give order and precision to the correspondent social activities. Hence there arise within social life great distinguishable series of facts which are studied by distinct sciences. The special social sciences-politics, economics, jurisprudence, the study of the associational aspects of religion, education, art, literature, and every other activity of men-exist as such owing to the relative isolability of certain kinds of social fact, the relative interdependence of Rocial phenomena belonging to the same series and
their relative independence of social phenomena belonging to other series.
