L. L. Bernard

The Teaching of Sociology in the United States

About seven years ago Mr. Tolman prepared and published in the Americac Journal of Sociology, a lengthy report on the teaching of sociology in the United States. Since that date obviously there has been much advance in the teaching of sociology, both as to the number of institutions giving instruction in the subject, as to, the number of courses offered, and as to the quality in the instructing staff in this line. Consequently the American Sociological Society at its meeting at Atlantic City last December decided to have an investigation made and a report published regarding the present condition of the teaching of sociology in this country, also to have determined as far as possible the relation o,f sociology in the institutions to the other social sciences, to practical social work, to methods, etc. Professor A. W. Small offered to undertake this investigation in the name of the American Journal of Sociology, of which he is the editor-in-chief, and to publish it in the same upon completion. The offer was accepted. The details of the investigation were turned over by Professor Small to the present writer, though the former continued to give him valuable help, and suggestion. A questionnaire was prepared under Professor Smalls direction and criticism and under the criticism of a number of the leading professors of sociology in this country. The questionnaire was sent to four hundred colleges, universities, and theological schools, and to one hundred and twenty-nine state normal schools. About two hundred and fifty replies were received, some of them coming in as late as the first of July, although they were sent out early in the spring. Of these replies one hundred and ninetynine were affirmative. One hundred and seventy-three affirmative replies came from colleges, universities, and theological schools. Twenty-six were from state normal schools.

A Classification of Environments

(1) The scientific study of environment has been delayed, due to a lack of emphasis upon the human or social-science aspect of general science. It is now developing in all the sciences. (2) Science is itself in large measure an analysis of environmental conditions and pressures. Especially is this true of the social sciences. (3) The environments of man may be classified from two standpoints: (a) the types of pressures exerted upon man and his social organization; (b) the order of development (the relative promariness and derivativeness) of the environments. (4) The psycho-social and derivative control environments are of the greatest importance for man. (5) These, and all other social forms of environment, have been produced as a result of mans coadaptive or co-operative adjustment to nature and the antecedent social environments. (6) The future social-control activities of man will probably be undertaken with a view to perfecting the psycho-social and derivative control environments.

The Interdependence of Factors Basic to the Evolution of Culture

I. The evolution of culture may be separated into three general stages, those of (1) the lowest animal types, (2) median animal types, and (3) the higher animals. The first stage has no culture and the second stage but little. The last stage includes the anthropoids and man. The human division embraces savage, barbarian, and civilized types of culture. II. Under each of these periods or stages are considered nine different factors which influence or determine culture, as follows: (1) gross organic structure, (2) neural organization, (3) language symbolisms, (4) the processes of thinking involved, (5) the phases of invention utilized, (6) the types of environment operative, (7) the types of adjustment functioning, (8) the objectives sought in adjustment, and (9) resulting types of social organization.

Invention and Social Progress

I. Inventions are: (a) physical, mediating an adjustment of man to his natural physical environment; (b) social, consisting of some form of social organization, adjusting man to other men and all men together to nature; and (c) method inventions, which are forms of neuro-psychic technique, ranging in content from simple habits to complex scientific laws and formuals, which aid man in interpreting and controlling his relation to his physical and social environments. 2. The Sources of invention are in the nature of the inventor (hands, brain, and speech) and in the nature of his environment (models, materials, forces). 3. The process of inventing is empirical and by scientific projection, most important modern inventions being of the latter type. An empirical invention is chiefly by direct copy, while a projected invention is by indirect copy. 4. Social progress is secured through inventions of the foregoing three types, and the method or scientific invention is preliminary to the highest degree of progress in physical and social inventions. 5. There are six major fields for future inventions: production, conservation, eugenics, euthenics, distribution, social organization.

Recent Discussion Regarding Social Psychology

Recent discussion in social psychology has emphasized especially the social situation as the primary determinaant of the behavior treated in social psychology and has turned attention to the behaviorist point of view, which stresses the physiological and neurological mechamism underlying the conditioned response to psychosocial stimuli. The social-interactionist school of social psychology has countered with a re-emphasis upon the symbolic and communicatory processes and also with a methodological protest against mere mechanical measurement and testing at the expense of sociological interpretation and sympathetic insight. Both schools have contributed toward the growth on an autonomous schience of social psychology.

The Objective Viewpoint in Sociology

Recently there has arisen some controversy over the extent to which subjective terminology, in particular subjective value expressions used as standards for the measurement of social processes and relationships, should be continued in sociology and to what extent they should be replaced by the substitution of objective and impersonal measurements and a ternminology to correspond. The contention is that the scientific sociologist must abandon the old subjective terminology of the psychologists, who describe acts in terms of conscious states and processes, and substitute therefor a description of the objective act-both overtly and neurally expressed-thus following the newer behavior psychologists into the realm of biophysics and biochemistry Since conscious states and processes cannot be measured except in their material manifestations, why not abandon the subjective terminology altogether, in so far as we are able to substitute definite measurements of action for the indefinite and general subjective descriptions of the consciousness correlates of the actions? Professor EllwoodI has attacked this tendency toward objectivism in general and the extreme statement of it made by Zeliony in particular. He makes two acceptable points against Zeliony which may be paraphrased as follows: (I) A large part of civilized mans objective or physiological correlates are neural rather than muscular, and therefore are not capable of being apprehended through the senses with our present methods of investigation. Consequently we can know these ideational-neural activity processes only through introspection. (2) We actually do investigate the psychic or ideational life of others, although Zeliony denies that it can be investigated scientifically, and we arrive at a more definite