Sociology and Modern Social Problems | Page 6

is safe to say that industry,
both in its organization and evolution, cannot be understood apart from
the general conditions, psychological and biological, which surround
society. Again, many non-economic forces continually obtrude

themselves upon the student of industrial conditions, such as custom,
invention, imitation, standards, ideals, and the like. These are general
social forces which play throughout all phases of human social life and
so show the dependence of industry upon society in general, and,
therefore, of economics upon sociology. Much more might be said in
the way of concretely illustrating these statements, but the purpose of
this text precludes anything but the briefest and most elementary
statement of these theoretical facts.
(D) _Relations to Politics._ We have already said that the state is one of
the chief forms of human association. The science which treats of the
state or of government is known as political science or politics. It is one
of the oldest of the social sciences, having been more or less
systematized by Aristotle. The problems of politics are those of the
origin, nature, function, and development of government. It is manifest
that politics, both on its practical and theoretical sides, has many close
relations to sociology. While the state or nation must not be confused
with society in general, yet because the state is the most imposing, if
not the most important, form of human association, the relations of
politics and sociology must be very intimate. On the one hand, political
scientists can scarcely understand the origin, nature, and proper
functions of government without understanding more or less about the
social life generally; and, on the other hand, the sociologist finds that
one of the most important facts of human society is that of social
control, or of authority. While political science deals only with the
organized authority manifested in the state, which we call government,
yet inasmuch as this is the most important form of social control, and
inasmuch as political organization is one of the chief manifestations of
social organization, the sociologist can scarcely deal adequately with
the great problems of social organization and evolution without
constant reference to political science.
An important branch of political science is jurisprudence, or the science
of law. This, again, is closely related with sociology, on both its
theoretical and practical sides. Law is, perhaps, the most important
means of social control made use of by society, and the sociologist
needs to understand something of the principles of law in order to

understand the nature of the existing social order. On the other hand,
the jurist needs to know the principles of social organization and
evolution in general before he can understand the nature and purpose of
law.
(E) _Relations to Ethics._ [Footnote: For a full statement of my views
regarding the relations of sociology and ethics, see my article on "The
Sociological Basis of Ethics," in the International Journal of Ethics for
April, 1910.] Ethics is the science which deals with the right or wrong
of human conduct. Its problems are the nature of morality and of moral
obligation, the validity of moral ideals, the norms by which conduct is
to be judged, and the like. While ethics was once considered to be a
science of individual conduct it is now generally conceived as being
essentially a social science. The moral and the social are indeed not
clearly separable, but we may consider the moral to be the ideal aspect
of the social.
This view of morality, which, for the most part, is indorsed by modern
thought, makes ethics dependent upon sociology for its criteria of
rightness or wrongness. Indeed, we cannot argue any moral question
nowadays unless we argue it in social terms. If we discuss the rightness
or wrongness of the drink habit we try to show its social consequences.
So, too, if we discuss the rightness or wrongness of such an institution
as polygamy we find ourselves forced to do so mainly in social terms.
This is not denying, of course, that there are religious and metaphysical
aspects to morality,--these are not necessarily in conflict with the social
aspects,--but it is saying that modern ethical theory is coming more and
more to base itself upon the study of the remote social consequences of
conduct, and that we cannot judge what is right or wrong in our
complex society unless we know something of the social consequences.
Ethics must be regarded, therefore, as a normative science to which
sociology and the other social sciences lead up. It is, indeed, very
difficult to separate ethics from sociology. It is the business of
sociology to furnish norms and standards to ethics, and it is the
business of ethics as a science to take the norms and standards
furnished by the social sciences, to develop them, and to criticize them.

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