In the nineteenth century men came to realize that all human activity ran its course within society and that nothing could withdraw itself from its influence. It was consequently deduced that everything which was not science of external nature must be science of society. Since the subject-matter of ethics and of the history of civilization, of aesthetics and demography, of politics and ethnology, was to be found within the framework of society, society appeared as the inclusive territory in which all these sciences congregated. In other words, the study of man became the study of society. This realization that man in his whole nature and in all its expressions is determined by the fact that he lives in reciprocal relations with other men, led to a new way of thinking in the field of the humanities. Historical facts in the broadest sense of the word, the contents of culture, the systems of production, the norms of morality, could no longer be explained solely in terms of the individual and his interests. But there was also no longer any necessity for having recourse to metaphysical or magical origins where this explanation failed.

Historical phenomena could now be explained by the interactions and co-operations of individuals, by the aggregation and sublimation of countless separate contributions, and by the materialization of social energies in structures which exist and develop outside of the individuals. But this did not create a new science. Neither did it mean that the existing social sciences had to renounce their independence and become subdivisions of one inclusive, synthetic social science which was to be called sociology. In so far as sociology, as a science, rested its claims on the ground that man must be understood as a social being and that society is the vehicle of all social experience, it contained no object which was not already treated in one of the existing social sciences. The actual situation was that sociology merely proposed a new way of dealing with the subject-matter of all these sciences, a method of science which, for the very reason that it was applicable to the totality of their problems, was not a special science in and for itself. In the same way induction, when it invaded all possible sciences as a method, was not for that reason a special science, let alone an all-comprehensive science.

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