The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c15.s1.42

c15.s1.42

In *Social and Cultural Dynamics* the categories, "sensate" and "ideational," have been employed as logical dichotomies in the most abstract manner conceivable. Sorokin has not failed, however, to suggest a mixed category. But in the application of these categories to the ideological or institutional data of historic culture-systems he appears to have postulated certain regions or races and epochs as embodying the one or the other category. After having accepted these postulates he quotes certain passages from certain scholars in regard to the regions or races and the ages. And then he believes he has "corroborated" his thesis. The proper method should be entirely the reverse. The data, both institutional and ideological, ought to be presented in the first instance. Then should come the interpretations. It is self-evident that many persons, regions, groups or ages that are interpreted as "sensate" in one manner may be proven to be quite "ideational" in another, and *vice versa*. Be this as it may, it is in the last instance that one is entitled to come forward with the discovery that such and such a region or epoch is sensate, such and such a region or epoch is ideational, and so on. In regard to Hindu culture, for instance, what the world of science wants to know is not the hypothesis or the postulate about its sensatism or ideationalism or a mixture of the two isms but the proof, objective and realistic, that it is really characterized by the one or the other, especially when the traditional and conventional indology has been under challenge for over two decades. Sorokin's *Social and Cultural Dynamics* has not cared to furnish the proofs by giving a comparative analysis of the Eastern and the Western institutions or ideas. It has given his postulates and then the quotations from a few authors and finally what he calls his corroborations.