**1. Introduction**

162 Sociological Landscape – Theories, Realities and Trends

Weber M. (1913): « Ueber einige Kategorien der verstehende Soziologie ». In *Logos.* 

*Internationale Zeitschrift für Philosophie der Kultur.*  Weber M (1922): *Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft.* Tübingen, Mohr

Weick K. (1995): *Sensemaking in Organizations.* Thousands Oaks. Sage.

Weick K. (1969): *The Social Psychology of Organizing*. Addison-Wesley, Reading

Probably for as long as there have been literate humans on this planet, living together in groups, drawing survival strength from such group life, some have wondered whether there were explanations for the patterns and regularities in their lives in company with one another. Their speculative answers about such matters would have constituted a kind of folk sociology, although nobody at the time called these ideas by such a phrase.

When Auguste Comte decided to coin the word "sociology" (Ca. 1839) to refer to a new science he was seeking to launch, he knew of recent societal change and was concerned to foresee the further evolution of societies and cultures. Humanity's recent intellectual history, Comte believed, had involved a constructing of one science atop another, resulting in a hierarchy with mathematics at the foundation, then astronomy, followed by physics, then chemistry, topped by biology (with psychology included therein), and to be crowned by sociology. He discerned three stages of advancement to the attainment of each layer, from people explaining the world in theological terms, through a metaphysical style of thought, and finally to positivism―understanding a given level of phenomena through scientific reasoning from observations. He believed this "law of three stages" was true for all societies, and he hopefully regarded Europe (France in particular) as on the verge of the third stage as he wrote.

Comte's views on societal evolution preceded by two decades the existence of an adequate theory of the evolution even of plant and animal communities. The products of such societal evolution observable in his time had yet to be complicated by some major developments that have happened since. The industrial revolution had only begun to get under way. There were only about one-fifth as many human beings on this planet as there are alive today, and none were then equipped to amplify their lives and abilities with such an array of powerful technological apparatus as has since become prevalent in many nations. The implications of that fact have not been as obvious as one might suppose. Today there are many more of us, and we have acquired by technological change gigantic powers to reshape our planetary environment, extracting resources from it to feed our proliferating machines, and injecting into it the products and by-products of all our activities.

Herbert Spencer in Britain, conceiving a human society as a kind of organism, wrote a multivolume *The Principles of Sociology* (1876-1896) as a component of his series of works on a *Synthetic Philosophy*, including volumes on *First Principles*, *Principles of Biology*, and *The Principles of Psychology*. It is doubtful that many sociologists read Spencer's other books

Sociology's Neglect of Ecological Context 165

The attention of people calling themselves sociologists has been almost entirely focussed on one species―*Homo sapiens*. Nature is replete with instances of interspecific interactions, and the lives of many organisms depend heavily upon their involvement in *ecosystems*. Only recently, however, has much attention begun to be paid by academic sociologists to social organization *among other species*, or to possibly instructive parallels between societal and communal relations among creatures of various non-human species (e.g., "social insects;"

Individuals of species *Homo sapiens* influence one another's actions as members of whole societies and as members of subgroups within them. Collective actions become structured. Sociology has provided ways of conceptualizing recurrent behavior patterns, roles, norms and sanctioning processes. More than a century of sociological research has yielded principles that enable some prediction of outcomes in the course of societal events and organizational activities. Only recently, however, has serious attention been paid by a few sociologists to the possibility that human lives are importantly subject to ecosystem constraints. "Human ecology" became a specialty within sociology largely by analogical reasoning when sociologists at the University of Chicago, studying urban growth patterns, saw parallels between their work and that of some pioneering biologists at that university studying plant and animal associations in the region (Faris 1967). At the time it seemed not to occur to anyone that perhaps it was (human) sociology that should be seen as a specialty within a larger science of ecology. Here again we have an instance of a missed opportunity to have acquired an ability to foresee today's ominous human

Although all humans living today, of all races, sizes, genders and persuasions, are members of the single species, *Homo sapiens*, sociologists do study, among other things, processes of *social* differentiation, by which various human individuals acquire in their experiences of interacting with others different skills, tastes, habits, desires, expectations, etc. Becoming differentiated by social processes, humans can function in relation to one another almost as separate *quasi-species*. Thus, when a field of knowledge developed within biology concerned with interdependence of various species collectively adapting to the environment surrounding them, its concepts and principles did attract attention among neighboring sociologists (Park et al. 1925; Park 1952; Hawley 1950). Parallels would be noted between division of labor among humans and the division of functions between assorted species

These developments were highlights of sociology's first century of existence as an academic discipline. It flourished especially at a university located in a young and growing American metropolis located at a transportation crossroads, linking urban and rural lives―Chicago. The USA saw itself at the time as a "young nation," *expecting* to grow and advance. It was perhaps expectable that a world's fair in that heartland city, held as a worldwide depression in the 1930s inflicted a serious interruption on the adolescent nation's onward-and-upward course of development, would call itself the "Century of Progress Exposition." Americans believed progress was inevitable, and were disinclined to question decades later the slogan "Progress is our most important product" in TV commercials narrated by an actor who later

**2. Anthropocentrism** 

predicament (Catton, 1980).

populations associated in an ecosystem.

became the nation's president.

monkeys and apes) and human social life.

(those without the word sociology in their titles). It might have been found instructive, however, if sociologists had looked into his *Principles of Biology,* as we shall see in a moment.

An earlier book by Spencer, *The Study of Sociology* (1873) was used as a textbook in one of the first courses in sociology offered in America, by William Graham Sumner (who served as the second president of the American Sociological Society). Among Sumner's many sociological writings was an essay decrying the early steps toward American imperialism by the acquisition of overseas territories (Sumner 1896). Insightful as that essay was, it fell short of seeing a human society's ecosystem dependence. So from today's perspective it appears to have been a missed opportunity for now badly needed enlightenment.

Spencer's was a long and productive writing career, facilitated by an inheritance which made paid employment unnecessary. It involved revised editions of several things he wrote. A young scholar, Arthur Tansley, who assisted him in the revision of *Principles of Biology* went on to become in 1913 the founding president of the British Ecological Society, and one wonders how much he may have influenced Spencer in a direction that might have, had there been enough time remaining in Spencer's career, caused salient ecological concepts and principles to percolate into his sociology, and thence into the discipline's further development. Perhaps this was another (narrowly) missed opportunity to provide needed foresight about today's global human condition.

As sociology developed, from Comte's time and Spencer's until recently, there were other grand system-builders, but there was an over all trend toward studying smaller aspects of societal living (Catton 1964). As sociology achieved academic status as an established discipline, it had come to include demographic studies, analyses of social organizations (large and small), interpersonal relations in families and other small groups, social effects of mass communication. industrial relations, race relations, social change processes, and various "sociologies of" (religion, education, politics, economic development, science, etc.).

For a while it was fashionable to think about various "schools of thought" among sociologists, but indications of agreement among different writers who attempted to list the schools were quite rare. Comprehensive system-building occasionally recurs, but it no longer dominates the field. In time the word "sociology" came to denote the body of knowledge acquired by using more or less scientific procedures to study human interactions at all levels from whole societies down to small groups (such as families) and even dyads, temporary or lasting.

Toward the end of the 19th century, another Frenchman, Emile Durkheim, sought to establish sociology's qualification as a real science by actually doing scientific research on specific sociological topics, exemplifying such a program by his studies of The *Division of Labor in Society* (1893), *Suicide* (1897)*,* and *Elementary Forms of the Religious Life* (1912). He also established a journal, the *Annee Sociologique*. Today there are numerous sociology periodicals, published in numerous countries. Most of the articles they publish are studies of social phenomena farther down the scale from the grand philosophizing of a Comte or other pioneers. And, naturally there are many sociology courses offered in colleges and universities around the world, but especially it has become established in the tertiary curricula in the United States.
