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PREDECESSORS
Second, they began to study social and
psychic phenomena as a physicist studies physical phenomena,
rationally but objectively. Man was regarded as a physical objecta
kind of machine ^ or physical
automaton. His life and action were regarded "as a regular
functioning of the human machinery; his death, as a wreck of it."
''There was not admitted any vitalistic force." Descartes and
Hobbes compared death with the stopping of a watch
mechanism.^ The human soul is interpreted as a movement as
regular as any motion studied in mechanics. ''Vita mot us est
perpetuus," says Hobbes. "Notre nature est dans le mouvement;'
wrote Pascal. ''Human life is nothing but a circulation of blood and
circulation of thoughts and desires," explains Malebranche.
Where there is movement there is inertia, according to
mechanics; and inertia is to be recognized also in human society
and psychical movement. It is manifested in a human being's
tendency to preserve himself and to look after his own interests.
''Siimn esse conser-vare, suiim sibi utile quaerere," says Spinoza.
This is a universal law of nature, and it is the law of human nature
also. Viewing the human soul in this mechanical way, the
physicists of the seventeenth century tried to analyze it into its
components, as a mechanism may be disassembled into its parts.
The corresponding components of the human soul were found in
a series of primary "tendencies," or "conations" (self-preservation,
gravitation to or repulsion from other human beings, etc.) or
"affections," or "appetites." Classifying them (six principal
affections, according to Descartes, or three, according to
Spinoza), they regarded a human being as an embodiment of
these components, and human activity as a result of these
conations (gravitation or repulsion or relationship). Their mutual
gravitation or repulsion results in a regularity of human activity and of
psychical processes which, being similar to the regularity of
physical movement, could be interpreted by the principles of
mechanics. In this way they set forth ''the mechanics of psychical
gravitation in the direct ratio of the mass, and in the inverse one of
the distance. [Phenomena of association and concentration of the
population.]
2. Local centres attract man in one direction, while great cities,
centres of the world, attract him in the other.
3. The more perfect the balance of these opposing forces, the
greater is the tendency towards the development of local
individualities, and towards the extension of association
throughout the interior of communities, with constant increase of
the power of i:)roduction, in the value and freedom of man, in the
growth of capital, in the equity of distribution, and in the tendency
towards harmony and peace. 4. The more intense the action of those
forces, the more rapid is
the motion, and the greater the power.
Heat is a cause of motion and force, motion being, in its turn, a
cause of heat and force.
The more heat and motion produced, the greater is the tendency
towards acceleration in the motion and the force . . . towards
decomposition of masses, and in-dividuaHzation of the particles,
of which they are composed.
The greater the tendency towards individualization, the more
instant are the combinations, and the greater the force obtained.
The more rapid the motion, the greater the tendency of matter to
rise in the scale of form [ from inorganic to organic world, and
finally to man].
4. The greater is that motion and force, the more does man
become subjected to the law of gravitation (association).
The more intense becomes the heat, the more rapid is the societary
motion, and greater the force exerted.
Individuality is developed in the ratio of the diversity of the modes
of employment, and consequently diversity in the demand that is
made for the production of human power.
The greater the diversity, the greater is man's power to control
and direct the great forces of nature, the larger the number of
persons who can draw support from any given space, and the
more perfect the development of the latent powers of both earth
and man.
Such are the essential physical laws and their social
manifestation. The above is sufficient to characterize the
essentials of Carey's social physics and its similarity to the
principles of the social physics of the seventeenth century.
3. CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL MECHANICS
Probably the most typical samples of a transfer and direct
application of the laws of physical mechanics to an interpretation
of social phenomena are the works of Voronoff, Haret, Alfred
Lotka and Antonio Portuondo y Barcelo."^ All these authors start their
discussion with an indication that ''the body of