Pitirim Sorokin

Bio

Brittanica on Pitrim A Sorokin:

“In the history of sociological theory, he is important for distinguishing two kinds of sociocultural systems: “sensate” (empirical, dependent on and encouraging natural sciences) and “ideational” (mystical, anti-intellectual, dependent on authority and faith).”

(https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pitirim-Alexandrovitch-Sorokin)

More at: Sensate, Idealistic and Ideational Cultural-Historical Typology of Pitirim Sorokin

Discussion

SUMMARY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOROKIN'S THOUGHT

Richard Simpson:

Sorokin's work in English fits nicely into three periods:

(1) an early period of miscellaneous writings,

(2) sociocultural dynamics and social criticism, and

(3) altruism.

His early period began when he came to this country and ended when he left Minnesota for Harvard. The broad range of his interests during these years can be illustrated by listing his books: Leaves from a Russian Diary, The Sociology of Revolution, Social Mobility, Contemporary Sociological Theories, Principles of Rural-Urban Sociology, and the Systematic Source Book in Rural Sociology. Sorokin began this period a disillusioned former liberal but an adherent of some of the approaches common in the social science of the time. Strong traces of behaviorism and Paretanism appear in his earlier writings of this period, especially in The Sociology of Revolution. A paramount idea is that human actions are irrationally determined. In Principles of Rural-Urban Sociology, written toward the end of this period in 1929, the behavioristic emphasis has become less noticeable and the conservative social values which are to be strongly featured in Sorokin's later works begin to appear.

After going to Harvard in 1930, Sorokin began his monumental study of world civilization which led to the work for which he is best known, Social and Cultural Dynamics. This work set the tone for the condemnation of our Sensate culture which is prominent in all of Sorokin's writings since 1937. Sorokin's extensive study convinced him that our civilization is overly materialistic, disorganized, and in imminent danger of collapse. He spent the next dozen years in warning the public of the danger and seeking a way out.

By the late 1940's he began to see what he felt was a solution. What is needed urgently, he decided, is an understanding of the ways in which altruistic behavior can be fostered. Only by making men more altruistic can we attack the Sensate major premise on which our society is foundering. In 1946 Sorokin established the research center in altruism, and since 1950 his books have been the product of this center's program. His interest in altruism has developed logically from his study of social and cultural dynamics. He is attacking the roots of the problems he first raised in the 1930's."

(https://www.suz.uzh.ch/dam/jcr:00000000-36d7-41d4-0000-000064b51e55/simpson_sorokin.pdf)

EVALUATION AND COMMENT

Richard Simpson:

"The enormous amount of historical and statistical material gathered together in Social and Cultural Dynamics has probably been Sorokin's greatest contribution to date. He and his assistants did a more complete and systematic job of classifying cultural items and tracing their fluctuations than anyone before or since has attempted. Staggering numbers of artistic and literary works, legal and ethical codes, and forms of social relationships are classified, and their changing proportions of Sensatism and Ideationalism are graphed. Sorokin has shown quantitatively, where others have only argued qualitatively, to what extent fluctuations in thought patterns parallel fluctuations in other departments of life. His numerical time charts should enable historians in the future to delineate the boundaries of such periods as the Middle Ages and the Hellenistic Age with a precision never before possible.

...

The threefold classification of Sensate, Idealistic, and Ideational supersystems is open to the same objections that are raised against all such systems.

Sorokin at times seems to be forcing his data to make them fit. This is especially true when he tries to distinguish between Idealistic periods and Mixed or eclectic ones. The only distinction appears to be based on an evaluation of the Idealistic type as a sublime, harmonious blend and of the Mixed type as an unintegrated hash. The criteria for this distinction are nowhere made exact or operational. Sorokin nevertheless does not seem to torture his data to make them fit his pattern to nearly the same extent as Toynbee, Spengler, and other global systematizers.

A number of critics have intimated that in reading the Dynamics the words "good" and "bad" might profitably be substituted for Ideational and Sensate. They are not quite correct in this. Sorokin prefers the Idealistic mentality to either of the two polar types, since he finds in it a balance of their best elements and an absence of their excesses and blind spots. In the Idealistic culture mentality we have a healthy cultivation of the whole man; neither his animal needs nor his capabilities for spiritual striving are neglected.

While Sorokin favors the Idealistic mentality above all, he seems to prefer the Ideational to the Sensate. Repeatedly he condemns the contemporary Sensate culture in no uncertain terms. We are sinking deeper into the "muck of the sociocultural sewers.""5 Our literature and art are "physio-dirty," dealing with "rogues, gamins, ragamuffins, hypocrites, mistresses, profligates ... prostitutes; the victims of gigantic passions, unbalanced and abnormal." We try to make our prisons better than our first-class hotels, thus favoring criminals over non-criminals. Our literature is "standardized pabulum."18 We are afflicted with insecurity, unhappiness, empiricism, music critics, and baseball players." While Ideational culture is not perfect, those who condemn it are "intellectual lilliputians"20 writing "tittle-tattle."" Idealistic culture is harmonious; it requires an intellect far above average ; it is sublime; it is marvelous.

Throughout the Dynamics and Sorokin's more recent books one sees condemnations of our present Sensate culture like those presented above. These nonscientific elements are not segregated from the body of the work and labeled as editorials rather than news; on the contrary, the whole of the Dynamics is interlarded with asides on the horror of the twentieth century. Many critics have found these infusions of sentiment objectionable in a writer who states that "the task of an investigator is to indicate the essential characteristics of each culture, leaving the evaluations to the sense or nonsense of others." Assuming that Sorokin is an investigator, he has gone beyond his allotted task."

(https://www.suz.uzh.ch/dam/jcr:00000000-36d7-41d4-0000-000064b51e55/simpson_sorokin.pdf)

Publications

• Social and Cultural Dynamics, 4 vols

URL = https://archive.org/details/socialculturaldy0001soro

Fluctuation of forms of art.--v. 2. Fluctuation of systems of truth, ethics, and law.--v. 3. FLuctuation of social relationships, war, and revolution.--v. 4. Basic problems, principles, and methods

• Social philosophies of an age of crisis. by Sorokin, Pitirim Aleksandrovich. A. & C. Black, 1952

URL = https://archive.org/details/socialphilosophi0000unse

• The Crisis of Our Age: the social and cultural outlook

URL = https://archive.org/details/crisisofourageso00soro_0

"Represents in a modified form my public lectures on The twilight of sensate culture given at the Lowell institute in February, 1941. It is based upon four volumes of my Social and cultural dynamics."-

• The reconstruction of humanity

URL = https://archive.org/details/reconstructionof00soro

More information

• a blog entirely dedicated to Sorokin's life and work: https://pitirimsorokin.com/

About Sorokin

• biographical account: A long journey; the autobiography of Pitirim A. Sorokin, https://archive.org/details/longjourneyautob00soro

• Rough Dialectics: Sorokin’s Philosophy of Value. By Palmer Talbutt Jr (ed.). Rodopi (1998)

URL = https://philpapers.org/rec/TALRDS-3

"This is an exploration in depth of the social theory of the Russian-born thinker Pitirim A. Sorokin, who played a large role in American thought. Sorokin's contributions to theories of culture, social change, modernity, and dialectics are evaluated in this wide-ranging study. The book emphasizes the place of values in the comparative study of civilizations. This volume includes a translation by Lawrence T. Nichols of Sorokin's essay in Russian on Tolstoy as philosopher, as well as a chapter by Nichols on Tolstoy and Sorokin. In this book, Palmer Talbutt, Jr. examines his former teacher, Sorokin, within intellectual, educational, and cultural contexts. The work will be of especial interest to scholars in social philosophy, the philosophy of the social sciences, philosophy of culture, and comparative cultural studies."

* Article: PITIRIM A. SOROKIN AND SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY. By Barry V. Johnston. Michigan Sociological Review. Vol. 12 (Fall 1998), pp. 1-23

URL = https://www.jstor.org/stable/40969020

"Pitrim A. Sorokin's career culminated in a body of work that linked his study of sociocultural organization and change to the crisis of modernity and a quest for peace. Capping his analysis was the Amitological Paradigm he developed and tested at the Harvard Research Center in Creative Altruism. This research yielded a field tested algorithm for transforming social relationships and improving the human condition. Sorokin's works and those of the Center have been largely overlooked in the history and study of altruism and prosocial behavior. The following paper invites a critical re-engagement with these ideas and the man who developed them."