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The article focuses on the interrelationship between sociology and history and observations on evolutionary development. In a general type of concern with social and cultural evolution, there is particular preoccupation with what may be called the method of evolution. The law of evolutionary potential states that the more specialized and adapted a form in a given evolutionary stage, the smaller is its potential for passing to the next stage. The fundamental idea involved here is that the greater the success of a particular form in adaptation the more it is likely to be lacking in that degree of relative amorphousness and diffuseness that allows flexibility and a kind of inventiveness in adapting to new circumstances. What is very much needed in the area of sociology is precisely close interaction between sociologist and historian. It will not do for the historian to dismantle some presumed mechanism and then be gleeful about the matter. His own chances for understanding in depth of a caste system, an estate system, a class system, a feudal system, the emergence of new cultural forms out of old can only be enhanced by a sure grasp of relevant mechanisms.

Explores Charles Peirce's conception of the use of history. Lessons of the history of science; Theories of evolution.