The social Theory of Georg Simmel

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1024612627

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-166627

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Spykman, Nicholas J. http://d-nb.info/gnd/124229867

Title:: The social Theory of Georg Simmel

Place of publication:: Chicago

Publisher:: Univ. of Chicago Press.

Year of publication:: 1925

Scope:: XXIX, 297 S

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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wed not alid. = by hing ~ate- ents ~e of ys a nter- are acter ions. erent se, it on of able The that nism 5. An use it mn to- 1ds of tions. nsect orma- anism hand, th for ~e are GENERAL INTRODUCTION 0 those ideas which are useful, and, as the result of a process of natural selection among the psychological processes, the useful ones become fixed and form in their totality the true picture of actuality. We have in fact no other definite criterion for the truth of an idea than that an ac- tion based on it gives the desired result. If through the process of selection mentioned above a certain number of ideas have become permanently fixed be- cause they are permanently useful, they build a realm of theory. A new idea can then be judged according to inter- nal criteria as belonging to it or as being contradictory to it. Since the norms and facts once fixed become the proofs of others, the single elements of knowledge can mu- tually support and carry each other. But the whole of a body of knowledge has a validity only in relation to defi- nite psycho-physical structures, their conditions of life, and the requirements of their activities. Relativism renounces all dogmatic pretension that the highest abstraction, simplification, or synthesis can close knowledge. There is no finite system of knowledge, there is only an infinite process of knowing. For the contention that things are thus and so related, it substitutes: It is for our reasoning a practical necessity to act as if things were thus and so related.! From this relativistic character of our knowledge it follows that the objective validity of a hypothesis is not finally determined merely by its logical coherence within a system of thought (philosophy), but that a new determina- tion is required through a relation with the external world (science), and vice versa. This mutual dependence of the two directions of thought is visible in the most general and in the most specific problems. Should each of the two methods become dogmatically fixed and claim for itself 1 Phil, des Geldes, pp. 68-73. Fy A YT a No, NR

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