A Conceptual Scheme of Society
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2200832 |
|---|---|
| Authors | George Devereux (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1940 |
| Volume | 45 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 687-706 |
| Publication date | 1940-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Journal of Sociology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0002-9602 • E-ISSN: 1537-5390 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1086/218446 |
| OpenAlex | W2003068157 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
Society is not an emergent. It is introduced into sociological discourse by subjecting sets of sense data pertaining to individuals to logical analysis in terms of the basic concepts of probability and of statistical mechanics. Sociology needs only three operationally definable basic concepts: "individual," "order," and "motion." Social equilibrium is defined with respect to social mobility. Units of social space and the concept of social mass are defined. Some basic theorems of social process are enunciated. It is shown that, after an external disturbance, society cannot return to its previous state but only to a related one, since society is a hereditary system. Culture is defined in terms of the principle of the least path, of groups of tranformation, and of the Heisenberg-Dirac uncertainty principle. It is shown that social space has certain properties of a curved space. Statistical and other formulas are useless in an analysis of social process, since they are incapable of describing hereditary processes which are statistical rather than mechanical. The logico-meaningful procedures of scientific method must be applied in, and adapted to the purposes of, systematic sociology
Epistemology · Mathematical economics · Social science · Sociology · Sociology of scientific knowledge · Space (punctuation) · Computer Science · Mathematics · Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence · Philosophy
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,04 |
| Citation span | 1956 - 1973 (18) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |