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American
SOCIOLOGICAL
August DVolume 8
1943 Review Number 4
M ANY years ago, whensociologywas index; Durkheim only twice. Lundberg also
young, society was an organism, urges his colleagues to become acquainted
and sociologists were much con- with mathematics and to employ its tools
cerned with its anatomy, which they called and techniques in sociological analysis and
social structure, and with its physiology, interpretation.
which they termed social process. After a Now comes Professor Stuart C. Dodd with
time they abandoned the "biological anal- his gargantuan Dimensions of Society which
ogy," and turned to psychological view- attempts to show sociologists how sociology
points and concepts. Imitation, crowd psy- can be made an exact, mathematicalscience.
chology, consciousness of kind, social inter- The reason for this enthusiasm for physics
action, etc., became the order of the day. In and mathematics is, we believe, fairly ob-
recent years we have witnessed a tendency vious. It is but a current manifestation of
in sociology to enter still other channels: sociology's life-long yearning to become a
those of physics and mathematics. science. When sociology made its debut, in
Professor George A. Lundberg' exhibits the wake of The Origin of Species, it took
modern physics to his fellow sociologists as biology as its model. Biology had enormous
an example of a successful science. He intro- prestige at that time, and sociology set out
duces them to quantum mechanics, field to emulate that science. But the results were
theory, atoms, electrons, energy transfor- somewhat disappointing. Sociology did not
mations, etc. His pages are adorned with the become a science. She therefore changed her
names of eminent physicists: Newton, Bohr, model; this time it was psychology. Decades
Planck, Heisenberg, Schrbdinger,et al. Ein- have passed and still sociology's ambition is
stein is cited sixteen times in the author not realized. She not only fails to command
* This paper is a revision of "Sociology and respect
as a science in other disciplines, but
Mathematics,"read beforethe MichiganSociological among many of her own followers as well.
Society,Ann Arbor,March 26, I943. The scientific wonder of today is the
1Foundationsof Sociology (New York, 1939). "new physics." Breaking the bounds of clas-
373
374 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICALREVIEW
sical mechanics, physicists of the twentieth I believe he claims. But to render "Absence
century have entered a new and exciting makes the heart grow fonder" in algebraic-
world. Triumph has followed upon triumph, looking symbols and equations-which is
while the learned world has watched with the heart and soul of S-theory-is hardly a
wonder and admiration.Armed and equipped contribution to science. The tragic thing
with powerful mathematical instruments the about Dodd's formulas and equations is that
physicist has won success without parallel. at best they do no more than restate a propo-
Why should not sociology again change her sition first presented in another form; and,
model, and try to create herself in the image at their worst, they communicate much less
of mathematical physics? than was contained in the original state-
Professor Lundberg, anticipating the ment. To give but one example:
charge of -imitation, insists that he does not Professor Dodd takes a diagram (p. 74)
propose to use the concepts and techniques which tells one quickly and effectively that
of physics and mathematics because they are the age of mammalsis about 25 million years
employed in those disciplines. "We adopt old, the age of man about one million; that
them, if at all, because they are effective the prehistoricera was about a million years
tools in reaching admittedly desired ends," long, the historic period only a few thou-
(p. I50; see also, p. 50). No one, I dare sand, and translates it into an S-formula:
say, would accuse Lundberg of advocating S = t: 'T+1. This formula, if presented to a
the use of the concepts and techniques of sociologist who had been taught to read
physics and mathematicsin sociology merely Dodd's notation, would tell him this:
because they are used in those sciences. Cer- The situation records time divided into 2
tainly we make no such charge. But, Lund- ages and sub-dividedinto 2 periodswith initial
berg's message to the sociologists seems to dates stated.
be sufficiently clear: "Look at physics. It
is an exact science. It is amazingly effective Thus we find that after laboriously learn-
and successful. Its success has been largely ing to read and write Dodd's notation, we
won because of its use of mathematics. Let come out with less information than we had
us then go and do likewise." at the beginning. The labor of communica-
But after discoursing upon the way in tion is increased, the amount of informa-
which physicists and mathematicians ap- tion transmitted, decreased.
proach their problems, and after exhorting Dodd offers us Dimensions of Society as
his fellow sociologists to give up their old "a mathematical approach to society," (p.
fashioned metaphysical and even anthropo- vi). It is filled with algebraic-looking sym-
morphic ways of thinking, Lundberg's soci- bols and equations. There are numerous
ology turns out to be rather conventional allusions to vectors, tensor theory, matrices,
after all. We find the old familiar concepts and non-Euclidean geometry. But, "beyond
of reflexes, habits, folkways, and mores; the chapter on the classical theory of corre-
co-operation, conflict, socialization, etc. lation, there is no mathematicsin the book."3
Quantummechanics-even Newtonian phys- Both Dodd and Lundberghave a naive con-
ics-still looks very far away. ception of mathematics. Both think of math-
Professor Dodd's Dimensions of Society2 ematics as a kind of notation rather than as
is an heroic and laborious affirmation of a a method of reasoning To translate a prose
faith. But as a contribution to a science of statement into a symbolic formula is, to
society, it must be reckoned a failure. Its them, mathematics. But, as Bell has said,
thesis, the S-theory, is that the sociologist
can express himself in a set of arbitrary 8 E. T. Bell, in review of Dimensionsof Society
symbols. And so he can, as Dodd demon- (AmericanSociologicalReview, Vol. VII, pp. 707-
strates over and over again-i 5oo times, 709, October 1942).
'See Lundberg,Foundations,pp. I22, 150, 234,
and Dodd's comment on mathematicalnotation,
2New York, 1942. op. cit., p. I 9.
SOCIOLOGY,PHYSICS AND MATHEMATICS 375
Lundberg and Dodd like to point to men them. But what is the significance of the
like "Galileo, Newton, Lobatchewsky and dance? Is it sacred or profane? Is the con-
Einstein" when they speak of the "history text military, agricultural,or medical? How
of the successive intellectual revolutionsthat are the esthetic and magical elements com-
mark the epochs of science."' But how about pounded? What function does the dance
Linnaeus, Lamarck, Lyell, Darwin, Harvey, play in the social life of the pueblo as a
Koch, von Baer, Pasteur, Lister, Boucher whole? These are real problems and they
des Perthes, to mention only a few of the are important. We cannot understandeither
great men of science who do not wear the the dance or the social life of the pueblo
halo of mathematics. In short, it is clear without understanding the relationship of
that one may speak of mathematicalsciences the one to the other. Now the ethnologist
and non-mathematicalsciences. Not that the has found ways to solve problems of this
division is absolute, of course. But that kind. But the techniques are not mathemati-
problems in certain sciences lend themselves cal, nor do I see how they could be.
readily to mathematical treatment, while Similarly, the girls' adolescence rites
progress is made in others by non-mathe- among the Kwakiutl, the boys' initiation
matical techniques, is perfectly plain. It re- ceremonies among the Arunta, the medical
mains to place sociology with reference to ceremonies of the Navajo, the mortuary
these two groups. customs of the Bantu, and thousands of
It is obvious, of course, that certain kinds other institutions, cannot be understood
of social phenomena can be handled with without an appreciation of the context in
mathematical instruments. Insurance com- which the ceremony or institution is found.
panies have been doing this for years. Banks As Professor Ruth Benedict has well ex-
and industrial corporations,too, make their pressed it, "the significant sociological unit
statistical surveys, analyses, and predictions. . . . is not the institution, but the cultural
The sociologist has shown that the success configuration."12 And so far, our under-
of a marriageor the outcome of a parole can standing of cultural configurations, and of
be predicted as a consequence of statistical the role played by particular institutions in
analysis. Anything which can be counted or the organized social life of communities,has
measuredlends itself to mathematical treat- not been obtained by mathematical means.
ment. Thus we can correlate birth rate with Perhaps, as Dodd suggests, we shall be able,
production of pig iron, the divorce rate with some day, to apply non-Euclidean geometry
the growth of delicatessens. We have here a to problems of this sort. But until someone
vast field for sociological exploration, for shows us how to do this, we shall have to
statistical analysis and prediction. And, de- do the best we can with the tools at our
spite innumerablestudies already made, the disposal.
field is far from exhausted, nor will it ever To turn from primitive peoples to our
be because situations are continually chang- own society, let us harken to words of Durk-
ing. But there are other sociological prob- heim, written many years ago. In the preface
lems which do not yield to mathematical to the second edition of The Rules of Socio-
analysis; they lie outside the province of logical Method he said:13
the mathematician-at least as far as we
In the present state of the science [of so-
can see at the present time. Let us illustrate ciology] we really do not even know what are
with a few examples. the principal social institutions, such as the
In the Indian pueblos of the American state, or the family. . . . We are almost com-
Southwest, great dances are held in which pletely ignorantof the factors on which they
gods are impersonated by men wearing depend,the functionsthey fulfill, the laws of
grotesque masks. That these dances are im-
portant is shown by the labor of prepara- 2 Patterns of Culture, p. 244 (New York, I934).
tion and execution and by the attention paid 13 The Rules of Sociological Method, edited by
Geo. E. G. Catlin, p. xlvi (University of Chicago
"Lundberg, op. cit., p. 49. Press, 1938).
SOCIOLOGY,PHYSICS AND MATHEMATICS 377
and others like them have not used mathe- With regard to the applicability of mathe-
matics when dealing with sociological prob- matics to sociological problems, we would
lems does not prove that it cannot be done. say: First, that many social phenomenamay
But, we believe, their failure to do so is be treated mathematically, particularly by
significant. statistical techniques. This has been a com-
This paper should not close without mak- mon, and often a fruitful, practice for dec-
ing one point perfectly clear. We are not ades, and no doubt much progress will be
opposed to the use of mathematics in soci- made in this direction in the future. But,
ology. Nothing would please us more than secondly, we believe that the fundamental
to be able to solve sociological problems problems of sociology, as of ethnology and
with integral calculus or the geometry of social anthropology, are essentially and in-
relativity. We admire physics and envy her trinsically non-mathematicalproblems. They
achievements. But we do not wish to be are like the problems of biology rather than
like the hare in the fable who, out of ad- of physics, and arise from the organic nature
miration for the lion, tried to live on meat. and consitution of society. It is not a Newton
And, if we are to have mathematics in our that sociology is waiting for, but a Darwin.