enter into the growth of population, we shall never be able to reduce
these factors to a single formula or law. Social phenomena are too
complex, we may here note, to reduce to simple formulas or laws as
physical phenomena are reduced. Indeed, it is doubtful whether laws
exist among social phenomena in the same sense in which they exist among
physical phenomena, that is, as fixed relations among variable forces.
Human society has in it another element than mechanical causation or
physical necessity, namely, the psychic factor, and this so increases
the complexity of social phenomena that it is doubtful if we can
formulate any such hard and fixed laws of social phenomena as of
physical phenomena. This is not saying, however, that social phenomena
cannot be understood and that there are not principles which are at work
with relative uniformity among them. It is only saying that the social
sciences, even in their most biological or physical aspects, cannot be
reduced to the same exactness as the physical sciences, though the
knowledge which they offer may be in practice just as trustworthy.


SELECT REFERENCES


_For brief reading:_

MAYO-SMITH, _Statistics and Sociology_, Chaps. IV-VIII.
BAILEY, _Modern Social Conditions_, Chaps. III-VI.


_For more extended reading:_

BONAR, _Malthus and his Work._