RECENT SOCIOLOGICAL TENDENCIES IN FRANCE.
It is the purpose of the present article to call attention to some of the recent tendencies in sociological discussion in France, and to offer some comments from the point of view of psychology and the history of thought.
Recent discussions[1] in France, as is indicated by the titles cited, have dealt largely with the province and methods of sociology. The works of Tarde and Durkheim[2] are the most thoroughgoing in this respect and have occasioned most of the other literature here noticed. What then are the conceptions of the distinctive characteristic of social facts, the subject matter for sociology?
M. Tarde, as is well known, finds the characteristic of social phenomena to be imitation.[3] He is especially concerned in the first of the two works under consideration with the problem of marking off sociology from the history of societies and from biology. As opposed to certain evolutionists who regard all institutions (law is the special institution here taken for illustration of the general principles) as having passed through the same stages under the influence of biological causes, Tarde holds that these causes are by no means the only forces at work. Social facts may be the effect of invention and discovery or of
- ↑ Les transformations du droit, G. Tarde, 2 iéme ed., Alcan, 1894. Review of the above, R. Berthelot, Revue de metaphysique et de morale, 1893, pp. 507–18. L'Imitation et la logique sociale, R. Berthelot, ibid., 1894, pp. 93–7. Le problème de la sociologie, G. Simmel, ibid., 1894, pp. 497–504. Les règles de la méthode sociologique, E. Durkheim, Revue philosophique, May–August, 1894. La sociologie: ses conditions d' existence, son importance scientifique et philosophique, M. Bernès, Revue de met et de morale, March 1895. Sur la méthode de la sociologie, M. Bernès, Revue philos., March and April 1895. L'Année sociologique, 1894, P. Lapie, Revue de met. et de la morale. May 1895. La logique sociale, G. Tarde, Paris, Alcan, 1895.
- ↑ His articles cited above are a sort of methodological supplement to his work La division du travail social.
- ↑ Les lois de L'imitation, 1890.
