tions adapted to the particular type? How do social systems change
in time?

Obviously such questions as these by no means exhaust the
possible ones that might be asked about society and social behavior.
They do not require an encyclopedia for their answer or a combina-
tion of all the social sciences from economics to criminology. Rather
they represent merely a certain focus of attention. They are primarily
the broadest questions that sociology, social anthropology, and social
psychology have to deal with. They form the common ground but do
not exhaust the data of these three fields.

The aim of the book is to give tentative theoretical answers to
such central questions, and above all to try to integrate the answers
into a system of thought on human society. Of course, it is easier to
raise questions than to answer them. The answers given are neces-
sarily not original, but are drawn from the literature of social science.
The masters of sociological theory who are most responsible for the
ideas expressed are Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Vilfredo Pareto,
Georg Simmel, Talcott Parsons, Robert K. Merton, Charles H.
Cooley, Robert E. Park, and Robert M. Maclver. In social anthro-
pology the main authors drawn upon are A. R. Radcliffe-Brown,
Bronislaw Malinowski, W. Lloyd Warner, Ralph Linton, E. E.
Evans-Pritchard, Margaret Mead, and Ruth Benedict. In social psy-
chology they are George H. Mead, Ellsworth Faris, Jean Piaget,
Prescott Lecky, the psychoanalysts such as Karen Horney, and the
psychiatrists such as Roy R. Grinker. Others of major importance are
W. C. Allee, Carl J. Warden, and Wm. Morton Wheeler in com-
parative sociology, Thorstein Veblen in economics, and Frank W.
Notestein in population. These contributors to social science devel-
opment, however, form only a small part of the total number to whom
the writer is indebted.

The intention has not been primarily to evolve new theories but
to synthesize the most advanced ideas bearing on the questions at
issue. The book's main claim to originality, therefore, lies in its
attempted integration of different schools of thought, many of which
seemingly have come to the same solutions but with different termi-
nologies and from different sets of data. In this task the writer is
painfully aware of the inadequacies of the volume. Given sufficient
time and resources, he would have preferred to provide more em-
pirical evidence -- growing out of the innumerable investigations

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