science, which, through modesty and euphemism, he called
philosophy. Aristotle, a practical man, refuted the Platonic
utopia in the name of the same philosophy. Thus the social war
has continued since Plato and Aristotle. The modern socialists
refer all things to science one and indivisible, but without
power to agree either as to its content, its limits, or its
method; the economists, on their side, affirm that social science
in no wise differs from political economy.

It is our first business, then, to ascertain what a science of
society must be.

Science, in general, is the logically arranged and systematic
knowledge of that which IS.

Applying this idea to society, we will say: Social science is
the logically arranged and systematic knowledge, not of that
which society HAS BEEN, nor of that which it WILL BE, but of
that which it IS in its whole life; that is, in the sum total of
its successive manifestations: for there alone can it have reason
and system. Social science must include human order, not alone
in such or such a period of duration, nor in a few of its
elements; but in all its principles and in the totality of its
existence: as if social evolution, spread throughout time and
space, should find itself suddenly gathered and fixed in a
picture which, exhibiting the series of the ages and the sequence
of phenomena, revealed their connection and unity. Such must be
the science of every living and progressive reality; such social
science indisputably is.