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The function of socialization in social evolution
The function of socialization in social evolution Author:Ernest Watson Burgess Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV ORIGINATION AS A FUNCTION OF SOCIALIZATION. II. SOCIAL ORGANIZATON Social heredity, we see, supplies the material for invention. The characte... more »r of the social organization, on the other hand, decides in large measure the tempo of progress. What is meant by social organization, and how does it impede or facilitate invention? Social organization, like social heredity, is an aspect of the inter-mental community. Social heredity consists in the function of the inter-generation communication of ideas. Social organization comprises the relatively stable phases of the inter-mental process. These more or less permanent mental attitudes tend to take objective form in the social structure with its division of labor and its specialization of function. Social organization consists, then, whatever its external forms, in the organized mental attitude of the members of the group. Consequently in the use of the term "social organization," stress will be laid upon its fundamentally psychic character. As related to invention, several stages in the social organization may be traced: (a) mental attitudes in general, as expressed in social tendencies rather than incorporated in social structure; (b) the fundamental stratification of mental attitude as exhibited in division of labor and specialization of occupation; (c) the emergence of a leisure class; (d) the rise of a scientific class; (e) organized research. a) The organized mental attitude of the group has played a decisive part in the conservation of invention. The attitude of the group is even more important in facilitating origination. In the first place, the freedom of the individual, so important for invention, varies with the group feeling. "There cannot be the least doubt," says Royce, "that individuals themselves va...« less