Sociology and Modern Social Problems | Page 2

"What is life?"; zoölogy, "What is
an animal?"; botany, "What is a plant?"; so sociology seeks to answer
the question "What is society?" or perhaps better, "What is
association?" Just as biology, zoölogy, and botany cannot answer their
questions until those sciences have reached their full and complete
development, so also sociology cannot answer the question "What is
society?" until it reaches its final development. Nevertheless, some
conception or definition of society is necessary for the beginner, for in
the scientific discussion of social problems we must know first of all
what we are talking about. We must understand in a general way what

society is, what sociology is, what the relations are between sociology
and other sciences, before we can study the social problems of to-day
from a sociological point of view.
The word "society" is used scientifically to designate the reciprocal
relations between individuals. More exactly, and using the term in a
concrete sense, a society is any group of individuals who have more or
less conscious relations to each other. We say conscious relations
because it is not necessary that these relations be specialized into
industrial, political, or ecclesiastical relations. Society is constituted by
the mental interaction of individuals and exists wherever two or three
individuals have reciprocal conscious relations to each other.
Dependence upon a common economic environment, or the mere
contiguity in space is not sufficient to constitute a society. It is the
interdependence in function on the mental side, the contact and
overlapping of our inner selves, which makes possible that form of
collective life which we call society. Plants and lowly types of
organisms do not constitute true societies, unless it can be shown that
they have some degree of mentality. On the other hand, there is no
reason for withholding the term "society" from many animal groups.
These animal societies, however, are very different in many respects
from human society, and are of interest to us only as certain of their
forms throw light upon human society.
We may dismiss with a word certain faulty conceptions of society. In
some of the older sociological writings the word society is often used
as nearly synonymous with the word nation. Now, a nation is a body of
people politically organized into an independent government, and it is
manifest that it is only one of many forms of human society. Another
conception of society, which some have advocated, is that it is
synonymous with the cultural group. That is, a society is any group of
people that have a common civilization, or that are bearers of a certain
type of culture. In this case Christendom, for example, would constitute
a single society. Cultural groups no doubt are, again, one of the forms
of human society, but only one among many. Both the cultural group
and the nation are very imposing forms of society and hence have
attracted the attention of social thinkers very often in the past to the

neglect of the more humble forms. But it is evident that all forms of
association are of equal interest to the sociologist, though, of course,
this is not saying that all forms are of equal practical importance.
Any form of association, or social group, which may be studied, if
studied from the point of view of origin and development, whether it be
a family, a neighborhood group, a city, a state, a trade union, or a party,
will serve to reveal many of the problems of sociology. The natural or
genetic social groups, however, such as the family, the community, and
the nation, serve best to exhibit sociological problems. In this text we
shall make particular use of the family, as the simplest and, in many
ways, the most typical of all the forms of human association, to
illustrate concretely the laws and principles of social development.
Through the study of the simple and primary forms of association the
problems of sociology can be much better attacked than through the
study of society at large, or association in general.
From what has been said it may be inferred that society as a scientific
term means scarcely more than the abstract term association, and this is
correct. Association, indeed, may be regarded as the more scientific
term of the two; at any rate it indicates more exactly what the
sociologist deals with. A word may be said also as to the meaning of
the word social. The sense in which this word will generally be used in
this text is that of a collective adjective, referring to all that pertains to
or relates to society in any way. The word social, then, is much broader
than the words industrial, political, moral, religious, and embraces them
all; that is, social phenomena are all phenomena which involve the
interaction of two