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In his presidential address to the American Sociological Society in December 1929, William Fielding Ogburn told colleagues that sociology was "not interested" in improving the world. "Science is interested directly in one thing only, to wit, discovering new knowledge." This goal required a "wholly colorless literary style" and a rigorous method, preferably statistical. The truly scientific sociologist, a service intellectual rather than a policy maker, would not pretend to "guide the course of evolution," but rather would generate the "information necessary for such supreme direction to some sterling executive who will appear to do the actual guiding". Statistical and advisory, a truly scientific sociology would also be nominalist in its basic assumptions. Since society was simply a term for the collective responses of the individuals who comprised it, sociology should confine itself to the measurement and tabulation of environmental change and responses to it.
William F.Ogburn, "The Folkways of a Scientific Sociology," Scientific Monthly 30 (1930), 300-306. For "realism" and "nominalism" in sociology, see Robert E. Park and Ernest Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Society (Chicago, 1921), pp. 36-44; J. David Lewis and Richard L. Smith, , American Sociology and Pragmatism (Chicago, 1980), chap. 6; Christopher G. Bryant, Positivism in Social Theory and Research (London, 1985), pp. 4-5.
Reading
William F. Ogburn: On Culture and Social Change is a collection of the work of Ogburn which spans the years 1912 - 1961. This collection is an examination of culture and social change from a sociological perspective.
Writing available on the net
Commentaries
Balazs, Tibor , "The Simultaneity of Discoveries," Science of Science; 1983, 3, 4(12), 357 -366.
Bannister, Robert C. Sociology and Scientism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), chs. 11, 12.
Boyer, Paul , Social Scientists and the Bomb," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; 1985, 41, 9, Oct, 31-36.
Bulmer, Martin ,"The Methodology of Early Social Indicator Research: William Fielding Ogburn and 'Recent Social Trends', 1933," Social Indicators Research; 1983, 13, 2, Aug, 109-130.
Camic, Charles Yu Xie, " The Statistical Turn in American Social Science: Columbia University, 1890 to 1915," American Sociological Review, 59:5. (Oct., 1994):773-805.
Carr, Lowell Juilliard, " Disaster and the Sequence-Pattern Concept of Social Change," American Journal of Sociology, 38:2. (Sep., 1932):207-218.
Del Sesto, Steven L., "Technology and Social Change: William Fielding Ogburn Revisited," Technological Forecasting and Social Change; 1983, 24, 3, Nov, 183 -196.
Duncan, Otis Dudley. 1964. Introduction to William F. Ogburn on Culture and Social Change, ed. Otis Dudley Duncan, vii-xxii. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Phoenix Books, 1964).
Frutos Hernandez, Teodoro de , "Psychosociological Forecasting of New Information Technologies," International Sociological Association (ISA). 1990.[asp Association-Paper]
Hauser, Philip. [obituary of W.F. Ogburn]. AJS 65 (1959-60): 74.
Huff, Toby E. "Theoretical Innovation in Science: The Case of William F. Ogburn." AJS 79 (1973): 261-77.
Keen, Mike Forrest, "William Fielding Ogburn: scientist, statistician, schizophrene," Stalking the sociological imagination (Greenwood Press, 1999), pp. 55-67.
Laslett, Barbara "Biography as Historical Sociology: The Case of William Fielding Ogburn," Theory and Society20 ", (1991): 511-538.See also Laslett, "Unfeeling Knowledge: Emotion and Objectivity in the History of Sociology " Sociological Forum, 5 (March 1990).
Murray, Stephen O ,"Extrapolation, Hart and Ogburn," Journal of the History of Sociology; 1982, 4, 2, fall, 96-102.
Peters, Thomas C.,"The Affectional Function Hypothesis: An Untested Tradition in Family Sociology," Journal of the History of Sociology; 1982, 4, 1, spring, 52-65.
Schneider, Joseph, " Cultural Lag: What Is It?"American Sociological Review, 10: 6. (Dec., 1945):786-791.
Smelser, Neil J. and Dean R. Gerstein, editors, Behavioral and social science : fifty years of discovery : in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the "Ogburn report," Recent social trends in the United States Committee on Basic Research in the Behavioral and Social Sciences, Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, National Research Council (Washington, D.C. : National Academy Press, 1986).
Wexler, Mark N., "The Ideological Implications of Cultural Lag Theory," Quarterly Journal of Ideology; 1983, 7, 1, spring, 1-11.
Obituaries
Hughes, Helen M. [obituary of W.F. Ogburn]. Social Forces 38 (1959), 2
Nimkoff, M.F. [obituary of W.F. Ogburn]. American Sociological Review 24 (1959): 564-65.
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