MCAT Critical Analysis and Reasoning Skills: Passage 4 — Flashcards

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There is no question that the facts of crowd excitement, of class, caste, race, and national consciousness, show the way in which the indi- vidual members of a group are, or seem to be, dominated, at certain moments and under cer- tain circumstances, by the group as a whole. Worms gives to this fact, and the phenomena that accompany it, the title 'collective con- sciousness.' This gives the problem a name, to be sure, but not a solution. What the purpose of sociology requires is a description and an explanation. Under what conditions, precisely, does this phenomenon of collective conscious- ness arise? What are the mechanisms—physical, physiological, and social—by which the group imposes its control, or what seems to be con- trol, upon the individual members of the group?
This question had arisen and been answered by political philosophers, in terms of political philosophy, long before sociology attempted to give an objective account of the matter. Two classic phrases, Aristotle's 'Man is a political animal' and Hobbes's 'War of each against all,' omnes bellum omnium, measure the range and divergence of the schools upon this topic.
According to Hobbes, the existing moral and political order—that is to say the organiza- tion of control—is in any community a mere artifact, a control resting on consent, supported by a prudent calculation of consequences, and enforced by an external power. Aristotle, on the other hand, taught that man was made for life in society just as the bee is made for life in the hive. The relations between the sexes, as well as those between mother and child, are manifestly predetermined in the physiological organiza- tion of the individual man and woman.
Furthermore, man is, by his instincts and his inherited dispositions, predestined to a social existence beyond the intimate family circle. Society must be conceived, therefore, as a part of nature, like a beaver's dam or the nests of birds.
As a matter of fact, man and society pres- ent themselves in a double aspect. They are at the same time products of nature and of human artifice. Just as a stone hammer in the hand of a savage may be regarded as an artifi- cial extension of the natural man, so tools, machinery, technical and administrative devices, including the formal organization of government and the informal 'political machine,' may be regarded as more or less arti- ficial extensions of the natural social group. So far as this is true, the conflict between Hobbes and Aristotle is not absolute. Society is a product both of nature and of design, of instinct and of reason. If, in its formal aspect, society is therefore an artifact, it is one which connects up with and has its roots in nature and in human nature.
This does not explain social control but simplifies the problem of corporate action. It makes clear, at any rate, that as members of society, men act as they do elsewhere from motives they do not fully comprehend, in order to fulfill aims of which they are but dimly or not at all conscious. Men are activated, in short, not merely by interests, in which they are con- scious of the end they seek, but also by instincts and sentiments, the source and meaning of which they do not clearly comprehend.

— excerpt from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by Park and Burgess