the Pittsburgh Survey
and the Carnegie Americanization Studies

8. The Concept of the Group in Sociology

9. The Person, Personality, and Status

10. Sociology in Its Relation to Economics and to Politics

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What do you understand was Comte's purpose in demanding for sociology
a place among the sciences?

2. Are social phenomena susceptible to scientific prevision? Compare
with physical phenomena.

3. What is Comte's order of the sciences? What is your explanation for
the late appearance of sociology in the series?

4. What do you understand by the term "positive" when applied to the
social sciences?

5. Can sociology become positive without becoming experimental?

6. "Natural science emphasizes the abstract, the historian is interested
in the concrete." Discuss.

7. How do you distinguish between the historical method and the method
of natural science in dealing with the following phenomena: (a)
electricity, (b) plants, (c) cattle, (d) cities?

8. Distinguish between history, natural history, and natural science.

9. Is Westermarck's _Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas_ history,
natural history, or sociology? Why?

10. "History is past politics, politics is present history." Do you
agree? Elaborate your position.

11. What is the value of history to the person?

12. Classify the following formulas of behavior under either (a)
natural law (social law in the scientific sense), and (b) moral law
(customary sanction, ethical principles), (c) civil law: "birds of a
feather flock together"; "thou shalt not kill"; an ordinance against
speeding; "honesty is the best policy"; monogamy; imitation tends to
spread in geometric ratio; "women first"; the Golden Rule; "walk in the
trodden paths"; the federal child-labor statute.

13. Give an illustration of a sociological hypothesis.

14. Of the following statements of fact, which are historical and which
sociological?

Auguste Comte suffered from myopia.

"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains."

"Science works not at all for nationality or its spirit. It makes
entirely for cosmopolitanism."

15. How would you verify each of the foregoing statements? Distinguish
between the sociological and historical methods of verification.

16. Is the use of the comparative method that of history or that of
natural science?

17. "The social organism: humanity or Leviathan?" What is your reaction
to this alternative? W