Reference has several times been made to biology and its subdivisions as basal for sociological studies. This has often been a point of confusion for beginning students of sociology. In saying this one does not imply that biology is sociology or that the latter is merely a subdivision of the former. Each science has its own field, distinct and apart from the other. By broad definition sociology is devoted to the study of human associations and human associations are not biological organisms. Yet human associations are psychological by nature, and psychological phenomena depend primarily on the existence of a physical nervous system as part of a physical body. Human bodies are biological organisms, and therefore, whatever biology and its various sub-sciences may teach about the body, and nervous system is of profound human interest. Then, too, biological knowledge is basal for hygiene and sanitation, and for the practice of medicine in its aim to keep the human body free from sickness and disease, or for physical culture in its attempts to develop a perfect physique.

Biology also in its botanical aspect has before it immense possibilities of social usefulness in seeking to enlarge through forestry the supply of timbers for building and wooded areas to serve as reservoirs for streams. Botany, furthermore, in its applications, aims to develop edible plants and fruits of all sorts so as to multiply the vital supplies of human foods, varying them by selective processes so as to furnish the many different varieties, for example, of the grains, the potato, the apple, pear, or grape, or flowers cultivated for their aesthetic value. In the same manner zoology through studies of animal life is becoming increasingly able to supply to hungry mouths innumerable varieties of animal foods, whether flesh, fish or fowl.

But, omitting for the present these scientific contributions from biology to human welfare, there are other aspects of the science that must be taken into account by the student of sociology in order to distinguish its boundaries and better understand sociology’s function. A common point of confusion for some is that of anthropology.

Anthropology is a descriptive science devoted to the study of man. Obviously, therefore, sociology and anthropology conceivably might easily overlap. In one sense anthropology is a sub-science of sociology; in another, sociology is merely a subdivision of anthropology. Anthropology historically arose as a subdivision of zoology and described the animal man, contrasting his physiology with those of other animals and comparing human racial physical differences of body and skull. This naturally led to a statement of the mental and social characteristics that distinguished man from other animals, thus leading on to the development of other sciences. Man, for example, has developed language to a remarkable extent, as compared with the language of animals, and therefore, the sub-science of philology devoted itself to this study. He is an animal making use of tools of his own creation, and hence arose the study of human technology, and of the survivals of earlier achievements under the study of anthropology. Again man is characterized by his mentality, expressing itself in art, religion, and mythological philosophizing and through this development primitive man multiplied his social relationships or group contacts.

Under such conditions the term anthropology becomes merely a sort of connecting link between kindred descriptive sciences, devoted mostly to studies of primitive man and early civilizations, so that the real science of man is not anthropology but sociology, since this goes far beyond mere description of primitive peoples and seeks by wider studies to work out the laws and principles underlying this vast mass of descriptive material, contained not merely in anthropology but in the special social sciences also, like economics, politics, and morals.

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