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ADAM SMITH AND MODERN SOCIOLOGY

ADAM SMITH

AND

MODERN SOCIOLOGY

A Study in the Methodology of the
Social Sciences

BY

ALBION W. SMALL
Author of "General Sociology"

Chicago: The University of Chicago Press
London: T. Fisher Unwin, I Adelphi Terrace

1907

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PREFACE

This book is a fragment which I hope will some time find its place in a more complete study of the relations between nineteenth-century social sciences and sociology.

The larger investigation is in progress in my seminar, and results are already in sight which justify belief that the work will not be without value.

On the purely methodological side, this investigation was stimulated, if not originally suggested, by experiences in connection with the St. Louis Congress of Arts and Science.

In all departments of progressive knowledge, the second half of the nineteenth century was unique in its intensive development of scientific analysis. It is not probable that scholars will ever permanently appraise the importance of analysis below their present estimates, but it is certain that we are entering an era of relatively higher appreciation of synthesis.

"The most distinctive trait of present scholarship is its striving for correlation with all other scholarship. Segregated sciences are becoming discredited sciences. ̧(!) 6

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