Roscoe C. Hinkle - Founding Theory of American Sociology, 1881-1915

Two objectives have been paramount in this undertaking of analysis and synthesis in sociological theory. One has been the development of a scheme for comparing and contrasting, generalizing and characterizing the (comprehensive or macro-) theories of individual sociologists. A second has been the exemplification of the scheme by its application to the classification and periodicization of the works of a particular aggregate of theorists in the history of American sociological theory, i.e., the period of 1881-1915. Admittedly, a third, accepting the ultimate desirability, if not necessity, of the explanation of the character of any prevailing sociological theory, has also been acknowledged and preliminarily formulated. suggest a possible strategy for explaining the character of early theory in relation to later developments of general theory in American sociology.

Undeniably, selection of a title for the present study has been a peculiarly perplexing task. Adequate typification of the complex interrelationships between problems and the several theoretical stances, which are signified by the prevailing assumptions, could not be represented by the minimum of words ordinarily demanded in a title. Evolutionary naturalism perhaps comes closest to meeting the requirements. But it also has certain disadvantages: it does not possess a broadly identifiable meaning among sociologists; it ignores entirely the predominant epistemological-methodological views of the period; and it fails to recognize the diversity of subpositions even within the substantive-ontological realm of early American sociological theory. Consequently, an entirely different approach one emphasizing a temporal dimension and significance was adopted. Founding theory is, of course, the (general) theory of the founders of American sociology. Furthermore, founding also suggests the initial formulation and establishment of a distinctive and persisting set of assumptions in and about theory and in and about the interrelationship among theory, the discipline of sociology and its societal context(s in the US). By no means is inquiry into (even earlier) precursors and antecedents (e.g., in Europe) precluded.

Because prosecution and completion of Founding Theory of American Sociology has extended substantially over a decade (and more), it has tended to acquire a history that has become significant for an understanding of the study itself. Actual research began in 1958 (i.e., four years after publication of The Development of Modern Sociology), but the character of the motivating interest was generated during graduate training in sociology at the Universities of Wisconsin and Minnesota. In part, the interest had its origins in a course in American Sociology offered by Professor John H. Useem at the University of Wisconsin in 1949 (before he joined the Department of Sociology at Michigan State University). In part also, the interest stems from an (even earlier) introduction to the approach of Frederick J. Teggart to the history of the major methodological ideas of the social sciences which Professor Joseph F. Schneider had provided in his theory courses at the University of Minnesota in 1944-5 and at Indiana University in 1947-8. (He had been one of Teggarts graduate students at Berkeley along with Gladys Bryson (Smith College), John M. Foskett (University of Oregon), Henry H. Frost (University of Utah), Edward Rose (University of Colorado), and Robert A. Nisbet (University of California Berkeley and Riverside, University of Arizona, and Columbia University).) Understandably, then, the conviction that the study of early American sociological theory must ultimately be justified by its contribution to an understanding of the nature of current sociological theory stems from Teggarts own insistence that historical inquiry must necessarily be concerned with the study of how the present has come to be as it is (Teggart, 1977, pp. 165, 168, 237-9).

Actual research began with detailed individual studies of major figures of early American sociology (e.g., Ward, Small, Ross, Sumner, Giddings, and Cooley). Systematic summary accounts of the specific theoretical orientations of the first four (though not the last two) figures were completed during the late 1950s and early 1960s. The analyses were reported at the annual meetings of several professional associations over a decade and a half. Papers on the antecedents of the action orientation in American sociology before 1935, the conceptions of theory in earlier American sociology, and the older and newer social evolutionisms in American sociology were presented at the American Sociological Association conventions in 1963, 1966, and 1967. Two papers on Cooley were part of the American Sociological Association and Eastern Sociological Society programs in 1965 and 1966. (Some of these papers subsequently appeared as articles, e.g., Hinkle, 1963, 1966, 1967.) Substantial portions of an analysis of Ross were published in 1969. The programs of Cheiron (The International Society for the History of the Behavioral and Social Sciences) afforded an opportunity for presenting analyses of the social forces notion, evolutionary naturalism, and a variety of aspects of Sumners orientation in 1969, 1972, 1973, 1975, and 1977.