Abstract

In these essays Shils gives an account of the course which sociology has followed from its beginnings in the early years of the century until the present. He argues that the discipline has shown genuine growth, but admits that it is not as yet, in any full sense, a science. He takes a middle course between those who smugly assume that any discipline as well-entrenched and well-funded as sociology must necessarily be doing valuable work and those who are content to repeat Poincaré's gibe that sociology produces a new methodology every year but never any results. He thinks that sociology has not yet produced anything that could clearly count as a scientific "law," but insists that the greatest sociologists have done work comparable to the best in any field of learning. He notes that in the last few decades the intellectuals have accepted sociology as legitimate and important and comments: "I myself think that this recent reception of sociology is a historically unique phenomenon which corresponds to a great movement, and even progress, of the human race. Sociology has found its reception because it is an organ of the experience of a broader life, a life which reaches out towards other human beings". Shils is extraordinarily informative about the filiations between various figures in the history of sociology in different countries. His account of the institutionalization of the discipline is full of academic gossip of the best sort, and gives one a splendid synoptic picture of the kind of people, and the kind of motives and interests, which brought the discipline into being and led it through its various transmutations. Shils sets his face against the "radical" criticism of sociology, and of social science generally, as bound up with the prevailing institutions of capitalist society. He gives a refreshing defense of old-fashioned objectivity. This is a wise and civilized book, which distills an enormous amount of information into limpid prose.--R.R.