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This volume is a symposium on The Individual and the Group, presenting 'a variety of attempts to formulate the central problem of sociological theory'. Interestingly enough, it appeared almost simultaneously with the publication of the symposium of the Association for Research in Nervous and Mental Disease, on The Interrelationship of Mind and Body. J. F. Brown introduces his article in the American Journal of Sociology with a brief historical consideration of dichotomies of this type, and Wirth sketches the history of the Individual versus Group controversy in sociology. Both symposia signify integrating tendencies between the various approaches and reveal the divergences as well as agreements. Such integration is not easy for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the intellectual and emotional difficulties of adaptation from one line of thought to another.
A symposium such as the one under review is of value more as a survey of the different approaches to the present status of thought and knowledge than as a means of advancing the solution of the problem to which it is devoted; for such progress comes only with increasing knowledge through further scientific work and not by taking thought alone.