40 AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY

to reconstruct from such evidences the whole of the given society at a
given time is to build hypothesis upon hypothesis without possibility of
verification. And when such records of a period are supplemented by
the literary and artistic remains, the possibilities of error are only in-
creased. The need for caution in the use of historical evidences becomes
apparent when one considers how far astray a future social analyst would
go were he to attempt to ascertain the character of contemporary Amer-
ican society by taking at their face value the recorded pronouncements
of political executives and business leaders, the stories that get into our
newspapers, and the versions of our life that are presented in plays, novels,
and, most especially, motion pictures.

The difficulties of reconstructing the social life of peoples and times
past from the records of those peoples have made most American soci-
ologists skeptical of the historical approach to sociology, particularly the
approach that is exemplified by German sociologists.1 American soci-
ologists have concentrated upon the development of techniques for the
measurement of things as they are, and most of their analysis has been
of contemporary societies. In order to illustrate the concepts thus ar-
rived at, some use will, however, be made in the following chapters of
sociohistorical data.

Current Events and Sociology.—The kinds of events that become re-
corded not only fail to reveal the normative life of a people but also
fail to yield much data on social change. The abrupt deviations from the
normal that become recorded—the murder of a king, the occurrence of a
plague, the outbreak of a war, and the signing of a constitution—reflect
changes that have already occurred. But they do not indicate the factors
that have brought those changes about—the slight, day-by-day events
that ultimately culminate in the modification of a political system, the
substitution of steamships for sailing ships, the transition from static
warfare to war of movement, or the development of techniques by which
plague can be prevented.

All this is to indicate that the alarms and excursions of contemporary
life as well as of history do not contribute much to our understanding of
how things came to be what they are and of the changes that are and
have been occurring. Little about the social past can be learned from
the history of kings and wars, and little about the social present can be
learned from the newspapers or even the reports of the more serious of
the journalists. The latest ax murder may make exciting news for a day or
two, but it adds nothing to our knowledge of crime. The latest race riot

1 Of whom M. Weber is perhaps best known in America. See H. Speicr's article
"Weber" (EncycL Soc. Set., vol. 15, pp. 386-388). For a discussion of the historical
school in sociology, see Chap. 15 of H. E. Barnes, H. Becker, and F. B. Becker,
Contemporary Social Theory (Appleton-Century, New York, 1940).