The Roots of Social Knowledge

Approaching the study of knowledge from the standpoint of its evolutionary genesis we find that there are two distinct sorts, which may be called spatial and social. The former, based on sense perceptions, gives rise to exact or mensurative science. The latter, based on the "mental-social complex," gives rise to a sort of knowledge essentially sympathetic or dramatic which is lackingin that exact agreement upon elementary perceptions which is necessary to true mensuration. However, owing to the essential likeness of mental-social complexes, a working agreement is possible and the accumulation of social knowledge goes on. The external or behavioristic study of human life should not be disjoined from its natural union with the sympathetic observation of consciousness. Statistics is a method of manipulation, not of perception. Interpretation and prevision, in sociology as in other sciences, is a work of the constructive imagination.