VI. Philosophy of Social Science (from A System of Logic)
A. Definitions
“The subject, then, of psychology is the uniformities of succession, the laws, whether ultimate or derivative, according to which one mental state succeeds another.”
“Ethology” is the science that determines the kinds of character produced in conformity with the laws of psychology.
A state of society “is the simultaneous state of all the greater social facts or phenomena. Such are: the degree of knowledge and of intellectual and moral culture existing in the community and in every class of it; the state of industry of wealth and its distribution; the habitual occupations of the community, heir division into classes and the relations of those classes to one another; the common beliefs which they entertain on all the subjects most important to mankind and the degree of assurance with which those beliefs are held; their tastes, and the character and degree of their aesthetic development; their form of government and the more important of their laws and customs.”
“An empirical law . . . . is a uniformity, whether of succession or of coexistence, which holds true in all instances within our limits of observation but is not of a nature to afford any assurance it would hold beyond those limits.” A universal law is exactly true and capable of being a principle in a causal explanation.
