rograms and practices, may be
described as the science of collective behavior. With this definition it
is possible to indicate in a general and schematic way its relation to
the other social sciences.

Historically, sociology has had its origin in history. History has been
and is the great mother science of all the social sciences. Of history
it may be said nothing human is foreign to it. Anthropology, ethnology,
folklore, and archaeology have grown up largely, if not wholly, to
complete the task which history began and answer the questions which
historical investigation first raised. In history and the sciences
associated with it, i.e., ethnology, folklore, and archaeology, we have
the concrete records of that human nature and experience which sociology
has sought to explain. In the same sense that history is the concrete,
sociology is the abstract, science of human experience and human nature.

[Illustration: FIG. 1]

On the other hand, the technical (applied) social sciences, that is,
politics, education, social service, and economics--so far as economics
may be regarded as the science of business--are related to sociology in
a different way. They are, to a greater or lesser extent, applications
of principles which it is the business of sociology and of psychology to
deal with explicitly. In so far as this is true, sociology may be
regarded as fundamental to the other social sciences.

VIII. SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL RESEARCH

Among the schools which, since Comte and Spencer, have divided
sociological thinking between them the realists have, on the whole,
maintained the tradition of Comte; the nominalists, on the other hand,
have preserved the style and manner, if not the substance, of Spencer's
thought. Later writers, however, realist as well as nominalist, have
directed their attention less to society than to societies, i.e., social
groups; they have been less interested in social progress than in
social process; more concerned with social problems than with social
philosophy.

This change marks the transformation of sociology from a philosophy of
history to a science of society. The steps in this transition are
periods in the history of the science, that is:

1. The period of Comte and Spencer; sociology, conceived in the grand
style, is a philosophy of history, a "science" of progress (evolution).

2. The period of the "schools"; sociological thought, dispersed among
the various schools, is absorbed in an e