Sociology reinterpreted

Human beings are the only animals able to re­flect upon their behaviour. While other creatures are imprisoned in the immediate present, men and women alone have the capacity to think about the past, to judge their own conduct, and to plan for the future. This capacity for reflec­tion has made human beings into what philoso­phers have called "dissatisfied animals". When they find their own behaviour wanting, people think about self-improvement. When they are dissatisfied with the world as it is, they try to change it.

Human beings not only can think back and plan ahead but are uniquely able to change themselves and the world in which they live. Nature controls nearly all the behaviour of other animals, but people have generally been able to dominate nature and overcome many of its con­straints. Besides being able to change their own behaviour and transform their natural environ­ment, human beings are also capable of chang­ing their human environment – that is, the society in which they live. Without the sting of reflection and the urge to make new social arrangements, men and women would still be living in caves.

The urge toward self-knowledge is at least as old as Socrates' statement that "the unexam­ined life is not worth living." Sociology has a much shorter history than philosophical reflec­tion, but it is part of the same human quest for self-understanding and self-improvement. Modern sociologists are aware of the human capacity to transform the world, but they also recognize the constraints, both natural and hu­man, that stand in the way of deliberate social change. Twentieth-century men and women know that there are limits to the earth's natural resources, and they are constantly reminded of the restraints on human action imposed by other human beings. The imprisonment of So­viet dissidents is only one example of how easily powerful groups can thwart even small efforts at social reform. Sociologists are interested not only in the willful controls placed on human behaviour, but also in the im­personal limits imposed by culture and social structure.

Although human actors usually have a choice of actions to take, the decision is always between structured alternatives, and not a choice of any conceivable alternative. Our so­cial bonds literally bind us in a culture, or to the web of customs and beliefs in which we have been raised. Other bonds enmesh us in a social structure of groups and organizations extending from our closest friends and family to distant institutions that affect us in ways we barely no­tice. When we choose to act, we are knowingly or unknowingly guided by the patterns of behaviour already laid down for us.

The promise of sociology lies in its contin­uation of the age-old effort to understand the human species. Comte’s motto – “to know in order to predict and to predict in order to control” – is still the task of the sociological enterprise. If the message of sociology is that human beings are to a great extent products of their social environment, the promise of sociology is that we can change that environment and thus free ourselves to creat a better world.