
A socially-affined (Ѻ) group of humans migrating.

A socially-affined (Ѻ) group of humans migrating.

In science, sociology is the study of the forces which hold individuals together in groups and institutions. [1]

Sociology falloff | mid 20th-century peak

See main: Physical sociology falloff problem

Consensus, from a number of sources, seems to the that sociology was growing into the form of a true science, mathematical and based in the natural sciences, but that with the event of WWII (1939-1945), and or up-till circa 1955, or sometime there, it peaked and fell off. The following are few quotes evidence to this view:

“The leading contemporary sociological theory—of the last sixty or seventy years—has been the mechanistic school, which may be classified as all sociological theories which interpret social phenomena in the terminology and concepts of physics, chemistry, and mechanics.”
— Pitirim Sorokin (1928), Contemporary Sociological Theories (pgs. xvii + 3)

“The school dominating present day sociology at least in America is the neopositivist one. It is best represented by G. Lundberg’s Foundations of Sociology (1939), in its companion volume which is S.C. Dodd’s Dimensions of Sociology (1942), but also in such works as G.K. Zipf’s Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort (1949), in N. Rashevsky’s Mathematical Theory of Human Relations (1947), and in innumerable articles appearing in the sociological journals.”
— Nicholas Timasheff (1950), “Sociological Theory Today” [5]

“For about twenty-five years prior to the middle 1950s it was widely held in America that sociology was rapidly becoming a true science.”
— Richard Brown (1977), per citation of Talcott Parsons (1954) and George Lundberg (1955) [6]

“The clarion call for a return to the dream of a social physics does not, at this moment, seem to be winning the day. Many social theorists are now more inclined to turn to historical and literary studies than to physics and chemistry for inspiration. Whether new developments in the natural sciences can breathe new life into the dream of a social physics is an open-ended and uncertain prospect. Nineteenth-century social theorists favored metaphors that mimicked the more successful natural sciences, selecting analogies mainly from biology, chemistry, and physics. Social scientists, modeling themselves after physical scientists, sought to discover the natural ‘laws’ of society and history. In recent decades, however, the ground has shifted. Today, the positivist dream of a social physics seems, if not dead, at least dormant.”
— Daniel Rigney (2001), The Metaphorical Society (pgs. 49 + 197)

American sociologist Barbara Heyl (1968) argues that the impact of WWII enacted a switch to Marxism-focused American sociology. [7] American sociologist Talcott Parsons (1968) stated that the reason for the fall off of Pareto-interest, after WWII, was scientific limitation. [8]

Terminology issues

See main: Sociology terminology upgrades

The premise of sociology defined as the subject of study when people act "social" together is in need of a bit of terminology deanthropomorphization, similar to the way the non chemical thermodynamically neutral term "life" has recently found terminology reform, via life terminology upgrade usages. In other words, just as "physics and chemistry do not understand the word alive", as Charles Sherrington (1938) put cogently put it, in respect to the descent of the term down the great chain of being, evolution timeline, or molecular evolution table, so to, by like extrapolation do "physics and chemist not understand the term sociology". [3] As Sherrington would say, if he were here: "When physics and chemistry have entered on the description", sociology disappears from the scene, it is an "anthropism."

A human, in short, is a powered molecule (Henry Swan, 1974), subsequently, while someone such as French chemist Jean-Marie Lehn, in his Supermolecular Chemistry (1995), may get away with making a refreshing paragraph jab at Goethe's Elective Affinities, using an Empedocles chemical aphorism stylized phraseology, alluding to the idea that supermolecules have some form of "sociology" together, as follows: [4]

“Supramolecular chemistry is a sort of molecular sociology! Non-covalent interactions define the inter-component bond, the action and reaction, in brief, the behavior of the molecular individuals and populations: their social structure as an ensemble of individuals having its own organization; their stability and their fragility; their tendency to associate or to isolate themselves; their selectivity, their ‘elective affinities’ and class structure, their ability to recognize each other; their dynamics, fluidity or rigidity or arrangements and of castes, tensions, motions, and reorientations; their mutual action and their transformations by each other.”

It is implicitly assumed that this as but amusing metaphor or analogy. If, however, Lehn was to posit these supramolecular castes, tensions, social structures, class structures, social associations, isolations, or selectivities, as being "real", i.e. existing in reality at the supramolecular level, his work would not be taken seriously, he would be labeled as a crackpot, and he would have never won the Nobel Prize in chemistry. The logic, therefore, applies at the human molecular level, i.e. in human chemistry. One may, for example, in human chemistry professionally speak of "inter-component bonds" existing between people (human molecules), e.g. see: human chemical bond, being that physics and chemistry do indeed understand the term "bond" quantifiably as an established and acceptable physical science concept, whereas, conversely, it is not permissible to speak of something "social" existing at the chemical level, being that this is an historical "anthropism", as Charles Sherrington (1938) would say, or "metaphysical" term, as Gilbert Lewis (1925) would classify things.

Clearly, then, by comparison to life terminology upgrade protocol initiatives, the future will see a certain amount of equivalent "sociology terminology upgrades", but this is a task yet to be completed. It may be said, in terms of measured phenomena, that when a community of humans goes beyond the group size of 150 (Dunbar number), which would seem to have something to do with the surface-to-volume ratio issue (surface law), that printed rules, i.e. legislature (laws, codes, and constitution), and a hierarchy of structured power relationships, i.e. leaders and government, need to be established, beyond that of man-to-man contract (Malcolm Gladwell, 2000), if the growing community is to maintain stability, or else a natural split (debonding) will accrue when it reaches the 250+ level of population, owing to instability. Here, in this description, we have stripped the description of mention of anything "social" making the term redundant and hence something that does not exist, as Patricia Churchland (Ѻ) would argue.


The Papin engine, showing the working body (or working substance) inside of the closed boundary of piston and cylinder, the model upon which human social systems are conceptualized in the sociology divisions of the humanities (or physical humanities), albeit with conceptualized with various energy regulated and or semipermeable social boundary models.

The Papin engine, showing the working body (or working substance) inside of the closed boundary of piston and cylinder, the model upon which human social systems are conceptualized in the sociology divisions of the humanities (or physical humanities), albeit with conceptualized with various energy regulated and or semipermeable social boundary models.

Thermodynamics
The subject of thermodynamics applied to sociology goes by a number of names, including: social thermodynamics, sociological thermodynamics, and socio-thermodynamics, all of which generally include the application of the laws of thermodynamics in the study of sociology, the logic of social energy and social entropy quantifiable inside of the boundary of a social system is the central topic. The following 1907 quote by American engineer Sidney Reeve eludes to the grand application of entropy in sociology: [2]

“The true role of entropy in the great circle of sciences, including sociology, which may be classified as the energetic sciences, is far broader and more important than even these words may indicate.”

(add discussion)

Chemistry
The subject of the application of chemistry to sociology goes by a number of names including: social chemistry, socio-chemistry (Person, 1976 (Ѻ)), socio-physical chemistry, pattern chemist (Yuri Tarnopolsky, 2009), and chemical sociology.

Physics
The study of the application of physics to sociology goes by a number of names including: social physics, sociophysics, and physical sociology (Leon Warshay, 2013).

Quotes
The following are related quotes:

“Sociology is the study of phenomena which includes all events and processes in which interactions between two or more persons occur; generally limited to conventionally non-negligible interactions.”
— Lawrence Henderson (1938), “Sociology 23”