Charles Horton Cooley

Cooley valued sociology as a means for interpreting life and understanding human nature, and he sought his materials in the great literature perhaps more than in sociological texts. Social Phenomena are conceived as integrated wholes; the social process as a functional unity. His outlook was broad enough to include the various particularistic interpretations in an artistic sence of the wholeness of things. This point of view is recognized in the attempts to get case histories which include all relevant facts. He deplored the division into hostile camps with regard to method. Although not averse to the use of statistics, he did not regard it as the most revealing discipline in sociology. But he was no less exacting in his requirements for careful observation, recording, and inference than the most rigorous statistician. He preferred to encourage studies of small institutions or limited situations that could be analytically and descriptively treated in accordance with social principles, stressing always insight and thought, rather than mere historical accounts. He especially enjoyed and was at ease in a small company of people, but he did not have the small talk requisite for large social gatherings. He believed in democracy and liberalism, though he never became involved in the strife of parties. He viewed religion from within, revealing a profound religious insight

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