ABSTRACT
Social organization is but a particular form of organization in general. Organization is an attribute of reality wherever it confronts us. It is the task of science to render the world intelligible to us. This means explaining how things are arranged or put together, how events are related to one another, and how they behave. In other words, it is the business of science to describe and explain the structure and function of things and events whatever they may be. Structure and function are, of course, closely related; they are merely complementary aspects, static and dynamic, of a single phenomenon. The word “organization” embraces both of these aspects, although it emphasizes structure perhaps more than function. But since we cannot fully understand a formal arrangement of parts without knowing how they are related to each other functionally, the term organization may be taken to include both. One might say, therefore, that the subject matter of science is organization.
