The Study of Sociology
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~210,000 words · 980 passages
Cite this work
- APAHerbert Spencer. (n.d.). The Study of Sociology. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/herbert-spencer/the-study-of-sociology
- MLAHerbert Spencer. The Study of Sociology. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/herbert-spencer/the-study-of-sociology.
- ChicagoHerbert Spencer. The Study of Sociology. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/herbert-spencer/the-study-of-sociology.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
A book about why society is hard to study: not because of the method but because of who is doing the studying.
Context and history
Published in 1873. The part that has worn best is the catalogue of biases Spencer sets out one by one: the patriotic, the class, the political, the theological, the bias that comes of expecting the facts to confirm one's upbringing. He argues that in no other science is the observer so intimately part of the object, and that this calls for precautions physics does not need. It is among the least dated of his books, precisely because it does not depend on his evolutionary system.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
They suppose nothing more is required than to subscribe money for relieving it. On the one hand, they never trace the reactive effects which charitable donations work on bank accounts, on the surplus-capital bankers have to lend, on the productive activity which the capital now abstracted would have set up, on the number of labourers who would have re ceived wages and who now go without wrages — they do not perceive that certain necessaries of life have been withheld from one man who would have exchanged useful work for them, and given to another who perhaps persistently evades working. Nor, on the other hand, do they look beyond the immediate mitigation of misery. They deliberately shut their eyes to the fact that as fast as they increase the provision for those who live without labour, so fast do they increase the number of those who live without labour ; and that with an ever-increasing distribution of alms, there comes an ever-in creasing outcry for more alms. Similarly throughout all their political thinking. Proximate causes and proximate results are alone contemplated. There is scarcely any consciousness that the original causes are often numerous and widely differ ent from the apparent cause ; and that beyond each immedi ate result there will be multitudinous remote results, most of them quite incalculable. Minds in which the conceptions of social actions are thus rudimentary, are also minds ready to harbour wild hopes of benefits to be achieved by administrative agencies. In each such mind there seems to be the unexpressed postulate that every evil in a society admits of cure ; and that the cure lies within the reach of law. " Why is not there a better inspec tion of the mercantile marine ? " asked a correspondent of the Times the other day : apparently forgetting that within the preceding twelve months the power he invoked had lost two of its own vessels, and barely saved a third.…