Introduction to the Science of Sociology Part 49

Ormond, in his _Foundations of Knowledge_,[135] gives an illuminating a.n.a.lysis of interaction as a concept which may be applied equally to the behavior of physical objects and persons.

The notion of interaction is not simple but very complex. The notion involves not simply the idea of bare collision and rebound, but something much more profound, namely, the internal modifiability of the colliding agents. Take for example the simplest possible case, that of one billiard ball striking against another. We say that the impact of one ball against another communicates motion, so that the stricken ball pa.s.ses from a state of rest to one of motion, while the striking ball has experienced a change of an opposite character. But nothing is explained by this account, for if nothing happens but the communication of motion, why does it not pa.s.s through the stricken ball and leave its state unchanged? The phenomenon cannot be of this simple character, but there must be a point somewhere at which the recipient of the impulse gathers itself up, so to speak, into a knot and becomes the subject of the impulse which is thus translated into movement. We have thus movement, impact, impulse, which is translated again into activity, and outwardly the billiard ball changing from a state of rest to one of motion; or in the case of the impelling ball, from a state of motion to one of rest. Now the case of the billiard b.a.l.l.s is one of the simpler examples of interaction.

We have seen that the problem it supplies is not simple but very complex. The situation is not thinkable at all if we do not suppose the internal modifiability of the agents, and this means that these agents are able somehow to receive internally and to react upon impulses which are communicated externally in the form of motion or activity. The simplest form of interaction involves the supposition, therefore, of internal subject-points or their a.n.a.logues from which impulsions are received and responded to.

Simmel, among sociological writers, although he nowhere expressly defines the term, has employed the conception of interaction with a clear sense of its logical significance. Gumplowicz, on the other hand, has sought to define social interaction as a principle fundamental to all natural sciences, that is to say, sciences that seek to describe change in terms of a process, i.e., physics, chemistry, biology, psychology. The logical principle is the same in all these sciences; the _processes_ and the _elements_ are different.

2. Cla.s.sification of the Materials

The material in this chapter will be considered here under three main heads: (a) society as interaction, (b) communication as the medium of interaction, and (c) imitation and suggestion as mechanisms of interaction.

a) _Society as interaction._--Society stated in mechanistic terms reduces to interaction. A person is a member of society so long as he responds to social forces; when interaction ends, he is isolated and detached; he ceases to be a person and becomes a "lost soul." This is the reason that the limits of society are coterminous with the limits of interaction, that is, of the partic.i.p.ation of persons in the life of society. One way of measuring the wholesome or the normal life of a person is by the sheer external fact of his membership in the social groups of the community in which his lot is cast.

Simmel has ill.u.s.trated in a wide survey of concrete detail how interaction defines the group in time and s.p.a.ce. Through contacts of historical continuity, the life of society extends backward to prehistoric eras. More potent over group behavior than contemporary discovery and invention is the control exerted by the "dead hand of the past" through the inertia of folkways and mores, through the revival of memories and sentiments and through the persistence of tradition and culture. Contacts of mobility, on the other hand, define the area of the interaction of the members of the group in s.p.a.ce. The degree of departure from accepted ideas and modes of behavior and the extent of sympathetic approach to the strange and the novel largely depend upon the rate, the number, and the intensity of the contacts of mobility.

b) _Communication as the medium of social interaction._--Each science postulates its own medium of interaction. Astronomy and physics a.s.sume a hypothetical substance, the ether. Physics has its principles of molar action and reaction; chemistry studies molecular interaction. Biology and medicine direct their research to the physiological interaction of organisms. Psychology is concerned with the behavior of the individual organism in terms of the interaction of stimuli and responses.

Sociology, as collective psychology, deals with communication.

Sociologists have referred to this process as intermental stimulation and response.

The readings on communication are so arranged as to make clear the three natural levels of interaction: (x) that of the senses; (y) that of the emotions; and (z) that of sentiments and ideas.

Interaction through sense-perceptions and emotional responses may be termed the natural forms of communication since they are common to man and to animals. Simmel's interpretation of interaction through the senses is suggestive of the subtle, unconscious, yet profound, way in which personal att.i.tudes are formed. Not alone vision, but hearing, smell and touch exhibit in varying degrees the emotional responses of the type of appreciation. This means understanding other persons or objects on the perceptual basis.

The selections from Darwin and from Morgan upon emotional expression in animals indicate how natural expressive signs become a vehicle for communication. A prepossession for speech and ideas blinds man to the important role in human conduct still exerted by emotional communication, facial expression, and gesture. Blushing and laughter are peculiarly significant, because these forms of emotional response are distinctively human. To say that a person blushes when he is self-conscious, that he laughs when he is detached from, and superior to, and yet interested in, an occurrence means that blushing and laughter represent contrasted att.i.tudes to a social situation. The relation of blushing and laughter to social control, as an evidence of the emotional dependence of the person upon the group, is at its apogee in adolescence.

Interaction through sensory impressions and emotional expression is restricted to the communication of att.i.tudes and feelings. The selections under the heading "Language and the Communication of Ideas"

bring out the uniquely human character of speech. Concepts, as Max Muller insists, are the common symbols wrought out in social experience.

They are more or less conventionalized, objective, and intelligible symbols that have been defined in terms of a common experience or, as the logicians say, of a universe of discourse. Every group has its own universe of discourse. In short, to use Durkheim's phrase, concepts are "collective representations."

History has been variously conceived in terms of great events, epoch-making personalities, social movements, and cultural changes. From the point of view of sociology social evolution might profitably be studied in its relation to the development and perfection of the means and technique of communication. How revolutionary was the transition from word of mouth and memory to written records! The beginnings of ancient civilization with its five independent centers in Egypt, the Euphrates River Valley, China, Mexico, and Peru appear to be inextricably bound up with the change from pictographs to writing, that is to say from symbols representing words to symbols representing sounds. The modern period began with the invention of printing and the printing press. As books became the possession of the common man the foundation was laid for experiments in democracy. From the sociological standpoint the book is an organized objective mind whose thoughts are accessible to all. The role of the book in social life has long been recognized but not fully appreciated. The Christian church, to be sure, regards the Bible as the word of G.o.d. The army does not question the infallibility of the Manual of Arms. Our written Const.i.tution has been termed "the ark of the covenant." The orthodox Socialist appeals in unquestioning faith to the ponderous tomes of Marx.

World-society of today, which depends upon the almost instantaneous communication of events and opinion around the world, rests upon the invention of telegraphy and the laying of the great ocean cables.

Wireless telegraphy and radio have only perfected these earlier means and render impossible a monopoly or a censorship of intercommunication between peoples. The traditional cultures, the social inheritances of ages of isolation, are now in a world-process of interaction and modification as a result of the rapidity and the impact of these modern means of the circulation of ideas and sentiments. At the present time it is so popular to malign the newspaper that few recognize the extent to which news has freed mankind from the control of political parties, social inst.i.tutions, and, it may be added, from the "tyranny" of books.

c) _Imitation and suggestion the mechanistic forms of interaction._--In all forms of communication behavior changes occur, but in two cases the processes have been a.n.a.lyzed, defined, and reduced to simple terms, viz., in imitation and in suggestion.

Imitation, as the etymology of the term implies, is a process of copying or learning. But imitation is learning only so far as it has the character of an experiment, or trial and error. It is also obvious that so-called "instinctive" imitation is not learning at all. Since the results of experimental psychology have limited the field of instinctive imitation to a few simple activities, as the tendencies to run when others run, to laugh when others laugh, its place in human life becomes of slight importance as compared with imitation which involves persistent effort at reproducing standard patterns of behavior.

This human tendency, under social influences, to reproduce the copy Stout has explained in psychological terms of attention and interest.

The interests determine the run of attention, and the direction of attention fixes the copies to be imitated. Without in any way discounting the psychological validity of this explanation, or its practical value in educational application, social factors controlling interest and attention should not be disregarded. In a primary group, social control narrowly restricts the selection of patterns and behavior. In an isolated group the individual may have no choice whatsoever. Then, again, attention may be determined, not by interests arising from individual capacity or apt.i.tude, but rather from _rapport_, that is, from interest in the prestige or in the personal traits of the individual presenting the copy.

The relation of the somewhat complex process of imitation to the simple method of trial and error is of significance. Learning by imitation implies at once both identification of the person with the individual presenting the copy and yet differentiation from him. Through imitation we appreciate the other person. We are in sympathy or _en rapport_ with him, while at the same time we appropriate his sentiment and his technique. Ribot and Adam Smith a.n.a.lyze this relation of imitation to sympathy and Hirn points out that in art this process of internal imitation is indispensable for aesthetic appreciation.

In this process of appreciation and learning the primitive method of trial and error comes into the service of imitation. In a real sense imitation is mechanical and conservative; it provides a basis for originality, but its function is to transmit, not to originate the new.

On the other hand, the simple process of trial and error, a common possession of man and the animals, results in discovery and invention.

The most scientifically controlled situation for the play of suggestion is in hypnosis. An a.n.a.lysis of the observed facts of hypnotism will be helpful in arriving at an understanding of the mechanism of suggestion in everyday life. The essential facts of hypnotism may be briefly summarized as follows: (a) The establishment of a relation of _rapport_ between the experimenter and the subject of such a nature that the latter carries out suggestions presented by the former. (b) The successful response by the subject to the suggestion is conditional upon its relation to his past experience. (c) The subject responds to his own idea of the suggestion, and not to the idea as conceived by the experimenter. A consideration of cases is sufficient to convince the student of a complete parallel between suggestion in social life with suggestion in hypnosis, so far, at least, as concerns the last two points. Wherever rapport develops between persons, as in the love of mother and son, the affection of lovers, the comradeship of intimate friends, there also arises the mechanism of the reciprocal influence of suggestion. But in normal social situations, unlike hypnotism, there may be the effect of suggestion where no rapport exists.

Herein lies the significance of the differentiation made by Bechterew between active perception and pa.s.sive perception. In pa.s.sive perception ideas and sentiments evading the "ego" enter the "subconscious mind"

and, uncontrolled by the active perception, form organizations or complexes of "lost" memories. It thus comes about that in social situations, where no rapport exists between two persons, a suggestion may be made which, by striking the right chord of memory or by resurrecting a forgotten sentiment, may transform the life of the other, as in conversion. The area of suggestion in social life is indicated in a second paper selected from Bechterew. In later chapters upon "Social Control" and "Collective Behavior" the mechanism of suggestion in the determination of group behavior will be further considered.

Imitation and suggestion are both mechanisms of social interaction in which an individual or group is controlled by another individual or group. The distinction between the two processes is now clear. The characteristic mark of imitation is the tendency, under the influence of copies socially presented, to build up mechanisms of habits, sentiments, ideals, and patterns of life. The process of suggestion, as differentiated from imitation in social interaction, is to release under the appropriate social stimuli mechanisms already organized, whether instincts, habits, or sentiments. The other differences between imitation and suggestion grow out of this fundamental distinction. In imitation attention is alert, now on the copy and now on the response.

In suggestion the attention is either absorbed in, or distracted from, the stimulus. In imitation the individual is self conscious; the subject in suggestion is unconscious of his behavior. In imitation the activity tends to reproduce the copy; in suggestion the response may be like or unlike the copy.

II. MATERIALS

A. SOCIETY AS INTERACTION

1. The Mechanistic Interpretation of Society[136]

In every natural process we may observe the two essential factors which const.i.tute it, namely, heterogeneous elements and their reciprocal interaction which we ascribe to certain natural forces. We observe these factors in the natural process of the stars, by which the different heavenly bodies exert certain influences over each other, which we ascribe either to the force of attraction or to gravity.

"No material bond unites the planets to the sun. The direct activity of an elementary force, the general force of attraction, holds both in an invisible connection by the elasticity of its influence."

In the chemical natural process we observe the most varied elements related to each other in the most various ways. They attract or repulse each other. They enter into combinations or they withdraw from them.

These are nothing but actions and interactions which we ascribe to certain forces inherent in these elements.

The vegetable and animal natural process begins, at any rate, with the contact of heterogeneous elements which we characterize as s.e.xual cells (gametes). They exert upon each other a reciprocal influence which sets into activity the vegetable and animal process.

The extent to which science is permeated by the hypothesis that heterogeneous elements reacting upon each other are necessary to a natural process is best indicated by the atomic theory.

Obviously, it is conceded that the origins of all natural processes cannot better be explained than by the a.s.sumption of the existence in bodies of invisible particles, each of which has some sort of separate existence and reacts upon the others.

The entire hypothesis is only the consequence of the concept of a natural process which the observation of nature has produced in the human mind.

Even though we conceive the social process as characteristic and different from the four types of natural processes mentioned above, still there must be identified in it the two essential factors which const.i.tute the generic conception of the natural process. And this is, in fact, what we find. The numberless human groups, which we a.s.sume as the earliest beginnings of human existence, const.i.tute the great variety of heterogeneous ethnic elements. These have decreased with the decrease in the number of hordes and tribes. From the foregoing explanation we are bound to a.s.sume as certain that in this field we are concerned with ethnically different and heterogeneous elements.

The question now remains as to the second const.i.tutive element of a natural process, namely, the definite interaction of these elements, and especially as to those interactions which are characterized by regularity and permanency. Of course, we must avoid a.n.a.logy with the reciprocal interaction of heterogeneous elements in the domain of other natural processes. In strict conformity with the scientific method we take into consideration merely such interactions as the facts of common knowledge and actual experience offer us. Thus will we be able, happily, to formulate a principle of the reciprocal interaction of heterogeneous ethnic, or, if you will, social elements, the mathematical certainty and universality of which cannot be denied irrefutably, since it manifests itself ever and everywhere in the field of history and the living present.

This principle may be very simply stated: Every stronger ethnic or social group strives to subjugate and make serviceable to its purposes every weaker element which exists or may come within the field of its influence. This thesis of the relation of heterogeneous ethnic and social elements to each other, with all the consequences proceeding from it, contains within it the key to the solution of the entire riddle of the natural process of human history. We shall see this thesis ill.u.s.trated ever and everywhere in the past and the present in the interrelations of heterogeneous ethnic and social elements and become convinced of its universal validity. In this latter relation it does not correspond at all to such natural laws, as, for example, attraction and gravitation or chemical affinity, or to the laws of vegetable and animal life. In order better to conceive of this social natural law in its general validity, we must study it in its different consequences and in the various forms which it a.s.sumes according to circ.u.mstances and conditions.

2. Social Interaction as the Definition of the Group in Time and s.p.a.ce[137]

Society exists wherever several individuals are in reciprocal relationship. This reciprocity arises always from specific impulses or by virtue of specific purposes. Erotic, religious, or merely a.s.sociative impulses, purposes of defense or of attack, of play as well as of gain, of aid and instruction, and countless others bring it to pa.s.s that men enter into group relationships of acting for, with, against, one another; that is, men exercise an influence upon these conditions of a.s.sociation and are influenced by them. These reactions signify that out of the individual bearers of those occasioning impulses and purposes a unity, that is, a "society," comes into being.

An organic body is a unity because its organs are in a relationship of more intimate interchange of their energies than with any external being. A _state_ is _one_ because between its citizens the corresponding relationship of reciprocal influences exists. We could, indeed, not call the world _one_ if each of its parts did not somehow influence every other, if anywhere the reciprocity of the influences, however mediated, were cut off. That unity, or socialization, may, according to the kind and degree of reciprocity, have very different gradations, from the ephemeral combination for a promenade to the family; from all relationships "at will" to membership in a state; from the temporary aggregation of the guests in a hotel to the intimate bond of a medieval guild.

Everything now which is present in the individuals--the immediate concrete locations of all historical actuality--in the nature of impulse, interest, purpose, inclination, psychical adaptability, and movement of such sort that thereupon or therefrom occurs influence upon others, or the reception of influence from them--all this I designate as the content or the material of socialization. In and of themselves, these materials with which life is filled, these motivations which impel it, are not social in their nature. Neither hunger nor love, neither labor nor religiosity, neither the technique nor the functions and results of intelligence, as they are given immediately and in their strict sense, signify socialization. On the contrary, they const.i.tute it only when they shape the isolated side-by-sideness of the individuals into definite forms of with-and-for-one-another, which belong under the general concept of reciprocity. Socialization is thus the _form_, actualizing itself in countless various types, in which the individuals--on the basis of those interests, sensuous or ideal, momentary or permanent, conscious or unconscious, casually driving or purposefully leading--grow together into a unity, and within which these interests come to realization.

That which const.i.tutes "society" is evidently types of reciprocal influencing. Any collection of human beings whatsoever becomes "society," not by virtue of the fact that in each of the number there is a life-content which actuates the individual as such, but only when the vitality of these contents attains the form of reciprocal influencing.

Only when an influence is exerted, whether immediately or through a third party, from one upon another has society come into existence in place of a mere spatial juxtaposition or temporal contemporaneousness or succession of individuals. If, therefore, there is to be a science, the object of which is to be "society" and nothing else, it can investigate only these reciprocal influences, these kinds and forms of socialization. For everything else found within "society" and realized by means of it is not "society" itself, but merely a content which builds or is built by this form of coexistence, and which indeed only together with "society" brings into existence the real structure, "society," in the wider and usual sense.

The persistence of the group presents itself in the fact that, in spite of the departure and the change of members, the group remains identical.

We say that it is the same state, the same a.s.sociation, the same army, which now exists that existed so and so many decades or centuries ago; this, although no single member of the original organization remains.