serve the past, the social scientist needs to look toward the future (Lynd 180). Lynd quotes the American philosopher Santayana who stated that "personality is a knife-edge pressed against the future" (Santayana in Lynd 180). Lynd asserts that in looking toward the future the social scientist must account not only for "the institutionalized past as it conditions present behavior" and "the given set of structured institutions" but also must consider "what the present human carriers of those institutions are groping to become" (Lynd 180). Lynd's observation subtly suggests that as social scientists look toward the future, they actually move toward shaping it directly.
Lynd asserts that a fundamental task of social science is to analyze the process of change and the options it might afford. He indicates that to overlook this important point would be tantamount to sterilizing its functions (Lynd 181). Lynd's observation illustrates that the task of the social scientist is misread when it fails to account from which base the individual sociological theorist or practitioner is operating. In order for the future to be effected, one must first admit what are the present influences which are operative.
In The Sociological Imagination C. Wright Mills indicates his own contribution to sociology's emergent self-consciousness. Mills contends that whether or not it is acknowledged, the "line-up of man's problems -- how he states them and what priority he assigns to each" rests upon "methods, theories and values" (Mills 128). Mills indicates that previously many sociologists worked by merely observing the immediate problems which individuals encountered in their daily lives (Mills 128). Further, he indicates that others used as their point of orientation issues which were either officially or unofficially determined by authorities and their interests (Mills 128). Mills argues that for too long "liberal practical sociologists" have ...