SOROKIN’S INTEGRALISM AND CATHOLIC SOCIAL SCIENCE:

SOROKIN’S INTEGRALISM AND CATHOLIC SOCIAL SCIENCE:

CONCORDANCE AND AMBIVALENCE

Lawrence T. Nichols

West Virginia University

~~Abstract~~

~~This paper is a revised and expanded version of discussant comments at the eighth conference of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists (Franciscan University, October 2000). The analysis~~ relates the Integral sociology perspective of Pitirim A. Sorokin to the teaching of the Catholic church regarding faith and science. I begin with a summary of the theoretical structure of Integralism and proceed to a discussion of its historical roots in Russian Christian philosophy, especially the tradition of Intuitivism. I conclude that although Integralism is generally consistent with Catholic doctrine, it does not deal with certain fundamentals of the Catholic perspective. Moreover, Sorokin’s formulation seems to imply the possibility of both Christian and non-Christian, theistic and non-theistic variants of Integralism. Nevertheless, Catholic social scientists may find the integralist perspective appealing and useful, especially as compared with other contemporary paradigms.

Pitirim A. Sorokin’s paradigm of Integralism offers an approach to scientific work that is highly compatible with traditional Christian doctrine as well as modern church teachings concerning science and religion. For these reasons, the integralist perspective is of potentially great interest to contemporary social scientists seeking to affirm spirituality in their teaching, research and publication activities. Despite such possible applications, however, the integral model remains rather obscure and is often regarded merely as the idiosyncratic outlook of a single sociologist.

This situation may now be changing as the result of an upsurge in scholarship about Integralism. Thus, Barry Johnston has championed the perspective in a series of papers, articles and books that urge sociologists to reconsider this “road not taken.”^[1] Vincent Jeffries has also argued strongly that Integralism is the most appropriate model for social scientists operating within the Catholic tradition. Jeffries places particular emphasis on links between Integralism and the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas that has become the foundation of church doctrine:

Sorokin was probably inspired in his formulation of integralism from his knowledge of the ideas of Aquinas. In his graduate seminars at Harvard Sorokin frequently lauded Aquinas and often mentioned him within the context of his integral theory of truth and reality. . . . The historical example of integralism is idealistic rationalism, because it incorporates faith, reason, and the senses in a harmonious system of truth. This philosophical school was characteristic of . . . the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in the Scholastic philosophy of St. Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas Aquinas . . . ^[2]

This paper will attempt to elucidate Integralism’s relevance for Catholic social scientists in two ways: (1) by tracing the theoretical structure and development of Integralism; and (2) by demonstrating linkages between Integralism and Russian religious philsophies of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The analysis will also consider the possibility of a range of integralist variants, which is clearly implied but left unresolved in Sorokin’s writings.

THE THEORETICAL STRUCTURE OF INTEGRALISM

Basic Propositions

Integralism postulates a three-dimensional reality that is known by humans through three corresponding channels of cognition.^[3] Thus, there is a physical aspect of the universe that is partly comprehended through the five organs of sense. In addition, there exists a realm of ideas that is understood by means of human intellect and reason. Finally, there is an elusive dimension beyond the reach of the senses and reason, which is known through intuition. The functioning of the three channels of cognition makes it possible for humans to adapt successfully to the complex universe in which they find themselves. In other words, Integralism contains a strong pragmatic element that posits an operating universe and a coping human species.

The assertion of three channels of cognition raises the question of relationships among them. Are all equal, or is there some hierarchy of knowledge and understanding? Does knowledge occur simultaneously in all channels, or is there a sequence of phases (as in Locke’s famous dictum that “there is nothing in the intellect that has not first been in the senses”)? Do the three types of knowledge remain distinct, or are they somehow combined (as in the Hegelian formula of “thesis-antithesis-synthesis”)? Sorokin addresses some of these issues, but he leaves others unanswered.

Sorokin argues for a relationship of complementarity among the three channels, in the sense that each provides a type of knowledge that is not available to the others. Thus, the channels make harmonious contributions to the total knowledge of human beings. There is, however, also a corresponding process of mutual correction, because each channel is capable of error in the form of misleading impressions (e.g., the sun appears small to the eye), fallacious reasoning (e.g., single-factor theories of social life), or inaccurate intuitions (e.g., predictions of the end of the world). Sorokin summarizes these relations of complementarity and correction under the heading of “epistemic correlation.” This position can also be described as a two-sided dialectic of cooperation and conflict in which knowledge arises through the continual interplay of faculties. Despite the logical possibility of epistemic stalemates or paralysis, Sorokin consistently emphasizes the triumph of integral cognition. The warrant for this conclusion seems to be the historical record of human achievement, especially as manifested in diverse civilizations or cultural supersystems that include religious teachings, great works of art, scientific discoveries and practical inventions. Thus, successful cognition is made visible through creativity, as well as adaptation.

Although Sorokin grants formal equality to the three channels of cognition, a strong case can be made that he actually accords primacy to intuition. At numerous points in his works from 1937 through 1968, he characterizes intuition as the ultimate ground of all forms of knowledge, whether religious, esthetic, scientific or technological. Indeed, Sorokin asserts that intuition is the foundation of all ontological and existential knowledge, because only through intuition can humans recognize an external world or the individuality of their own selves. Reason apparently occupies the second place in the integralist model, perhaps because of its ability to transform sensory data into higher order creations (e.g., the laws of natural science). Sensory knowledge thus ranks third, though it is by no means devalued by Sorokin. Despite its limitations, sensory knowledge is vital to human health and is just as indispensable to the total matrix of knowledge as its two counterparts.

This formulation of levels of knowing and their mutual compatibility is consistent with Catholic doctrine, as recently reaffirmed in the papal encyclical Faith and Reason (Fides et Ratio). In his discussion of types of knowing, Pope John Paul II emphasizes the continuity of church teaching over many centuries.

The First Vatican Council teaches, then, that the truth attained by philosophy and the truth of revelation are neither identical nor mutually exclusive. . . . Based upon God’s testimony and enjoying the supernatural assistance of grace, faith is of an order other than philosophical knowledge which depends upon sense perception and experience and which advances by the light of the intellect alone. Philosophy and the sciences function within the order of natural reason; while faith, enlightened and guided by the Spirit, recognizes in the message of salvation the “fullness of grace and truth” . . . .^[4]

Development of the Perspective

In the secondary literature on Sorokin there has been a strong tendency to regard Integralism as originating in the period 1937 to 1941, with the publication of the four volumes of Social and Cultural Dynamics. This is understandable, given that Sorokin himself took this position, especially in the 1963 autobiography, A Long Journey, and it can be regarded as correct with regard to fully developed statements of Integralism. A very strong case, however, can be made that Sorokin was developing an integralist view from the time of his earliest writings in Russia, some twenty-five years before Dynamics. Thus, in 1912, two years after the death of Leo Tolstoy, Sorokin published an article, “Leo Tolstoy as a Philosopher,” in which he contended that the vast corpus of Tolstoy’s later writings expressed a unified set of philosophical propositions. Sorokin dealt with Tolstoy’s critique of modern science, quoting with apparent approval Tolstoy’s assertion that:

All who turn to the science of our day not for the purpose of satisfying idle curiosity, nor in order to play a role in science, nor to make a living at science, but simply in order to answer direct, simple, vital questions find that science answers for them thousands of complex and learned questions--but not that one question to which every intelligent person seeks an answer: “What am I, and how am I to live?’”^[5]

This touches on a central theme of the later Integralism, namely, the unification of the true (science) and the good (ethics).

During 1917, the year of the Russian Revolution, Sorokin served as an editor and columnist for the political newspaper, Volya Naroda (The People’s Will), which was sponsored by the Social Revolutionary Party. His writings included a series of columns under the heading, “The Notes of a Sociologist,” which provided commentary on the unfolding political process. As I have argued elsewhere, Sorokin’s sociological essays in Volya Naroda may be understood as an effort to bridge the gap between science and moral activism, that is, to unify the true and the good.^[6] In addition to the political opinions in “Notes,” Sorokin attempted to convey scientific findings to a popular audience. Perhaps the best example here is his generalization about the stages of revolution, which later appeared in his 1925 book, The Sociology of Revolution. Indeed, the “prophetic” stance usually identified with Sorokin’s post-1937 phase is manifest in some of the Volya Naroda columns.^[7]

The same stance appears even in such an apparently “hard science” work as Hunger as a Factor in Human Affairs, written during the terrible famine of 1922. After an objective examination of numerous biosocial and social processes, Sorokin condemns the new Soviet regime:

. . . it is false to assume, as many socialists do, that truly socialistic governments have not existed previously, and that nationalization has brought positive results. The experiences of Russia and other countries . . . indicate just the opposite: namely, nationalization, communization, and the development of statism leads to poverty, not to prosperity, and by no means do they improve the social conditions of the masses.^[8]

This pronouncement closely resembles the fierce critique of state power in the 1959 work, Power and Morality: Who Shall Guard The Guardians?^[9] Once again the theme is the necessary unification of science and ethics, and again Sorokin echoes Tolstoy’s prophetic thunder.

After leaving the Soviet Union in 1922 and spending a year in Czechoslovakia, Sorokin emigrated to the United States where he poured out a series of influential works: The Sociology of Revolution (1925), Social Mobility (1927), Contemporary Sociological Theories (1928), Principles of Rural-Urban Sociology (1929), and A Systematic Sourcebook in Rural-Urban Sociology (1930-1932).^[10] These have been generally regarded as mainstream empirical studies, in contrast to the controversial integralist writings beginning with Social and Cultural Dynamics. Interestingly, however, key features of Integralism appear in at least two of them. Thus, in Revolution Sorokin goes beyond historical survey and detached analysis to ethical judgment:

. . . revolution is a bad method for the improvement of the material and spiritual conditions of the masses. . . . Whatever gains it yields are purchased at a prodigious and disproportionate cost. . . . If such are the objective results of revolution then in the name of man, his prosperity, his rights, his freedom and for the sake of the material and spiritual progress of the working classes, it is not only my right but it is my duty, to abstain from the idolatry of revolution.^[11]

Another basic feature of Integralism, the complementarity of different types of knowledge, appears clearly in the following passage from Contemporary Sociological Theories:

An artificial standardization in sociology ... may lead to a degeneration of real sociological knowledge into dry and lifeless scholastics. The complex nature of social phenomena makes rather necessary a variety of the approaches and methods of study. Attacking them with various methods and from various scientifically sound standpoints we have more chances to know them than by attacking them with only one standardized method and from one standardized standpoint.^[12]

As in his mature Integralism, Sorokin here explains the need for multiple types of knowing in terms of the complex nature of the object of knowledge.

In 1937, in the first three volumes of Social and Cultural Dynamics, Sorokin provided the first relatively full statement of Integralism, although he used the term “idealistic culture mentality” for it.^[13] This mentality was defined as a harmonious blend of two fundamentally opposed premises about reality/value: that it was spiritual (ideational premise) and that it was secular (sensate premise). Within the idealistic synthesis, the ideational component retained primacy. Although some persons in all eras had idealistic mentalities, idealistic systems of culture and society were relatively rare and short-lived. The fourth century B.C. and the twelfth to thirteenth centuries of the Christian era in Europe were the only two examples Sorokin found over a period of twenty-five centuries.

In 1941, the term “integral” made its initial appearance in the fourth volume of Dynamics, where it applied primarily to epistemology. According to Sorokin:

. . . the integral truth is not identical with any of the three forms of truth, but embraces all of them. In this three-dimensional aspect of the truth of faith, of reason, and of the senses, the integral truth is nearer to the absolute truth than any one-sided truth of one of these three forms.^[14]

Sorokin then adds an important proposition that may be described as a self-correcting dialectic:

Each of these systems of truth separated from the rest becomes less valid or more fallacious. . . . Each of these sources and systems of truth misleads us much more easily when it is isolated from, and unchecked by, the other sources and systems of truth than when it is united into one integral whole with the others.^[15]

In 1943, in Sociocultural Causality, Space, Time, Sorokin introduced two little noted distinctions that illumine certain tensions within the integralist model. The first concerns types of integralists. In a footnote, he divided integralists into two broad groups. One was composed of “idealistic integralists such as Plato, Aristotle, Erigena, St. Thomas Aquinas and G. B. Vico,” whereas another (in which Sorokin seemingly located himself) included “the more modern representatives of this school of thought.”^[16] A second conceptual distinction dealt with intuition, which Sorokin had also referred to as “the truth of faith.” According to the new formulation, it was necessary to distinguish between “normal” and “exceptional” varieties:

Normal intuition respecting the comparatively familiar phases of sociocultural reality is vouchsafed to almost all human beings; exceptional intuition concerning the complex varieties of sociocultural and cosmic reality is possessed only by the elite, such as Buddha or Lao-Tse, Plato or St. Augustine, St. Paul or Master Eckhart, Phidias, Bach or Beethoven, Dante or Shakespeare, or Sir Isaac Newton.^[17]

In 1954, The Ways and Power of Love incorporated a model of human personality structure into the Integral paradigm.^[18] According to this formulation, human beings have four-dimensional personalities composed of the following elements: a biological unconscious, a biological conscious, a sociocultural conscious, and a supraconscious. As a channel for knowing the supersensory and superrational aspects of reality, the supraconscious bears some resemblance to the traditional Christian notion of the human soul. The supraconscious was also seen as the source of “the mysterious energy of love.” It therefore linked Sorokin’s earlier studies of sociocultural change to his researches on altruism and amitology from the late 1940s through 1959.

In 1963, Sorokin provided a general statement of Integralism on the occasion of a festschrift volume that assessed his thirty-five-year career in the United States. Replying to the contributors, he referred to Integralism as ontology and system of cognition:

My ontology represents a mere variation of the ancient, powerful and perennial stream of philosophical thought represented by Taoism, the Upanishads and Bhagavad-Gita, brilliantly analyzed by the Hindu and Mahayana Buddhist logicians . . . , shared by all branches of Buddhism . . . and reiterated by the great Muslim thinkers and poets . . . . In the Greco-Roman world this philosophy was developed by Heraclitus and Plato . . . it was partly supported by Aristotle, and with variations it was reiterated by Plotinus, Porphyry, and the thinkers of the Neo-Platonic, the Hermetic, the Orphic, and other currents of thought. In Christianity it was expressed by many Church Fathers, like Clement of Alexandria, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Origen, St. Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, Maximus Confessor, John Scotus Erigena, St. John of Damascus, and later on by Hugh of St. Victor, St. Thomas Aquinas . . . , Nicolas of Cusa, and by many Christian mystics . . . .^[19]

In 1964, in a less well known work, The Basic Trends of Our Time, Sorokin further broadened his conceptual model. When first introducing Integralism, Sorokin had been engaged in a study of sociocultural change in Europe and North America over a period of twenty-five centuries. Therefore his discussion of the fluctuations of Ideational, Idealistic and Sensate cultural supersystems had been largely confined to the ancient, medieval and modern West. In Basic Trends, Sorokin incorporated contemporary Eastern culture into the perspective, and wrote hopefully of the emergence of Integral sociocultural orders in both East and West.

. . . starting from almost opposite forms of sociocultural orders, the East and the West are confronting a basically similar task: that of building a new integral order in place of their respective crumbling ones. This does not mean that these integral orders would be identical in all respects. If realized, the order would certainly be built in “the Eastern style” in the East and in “the Western style” in the West . . . .^[20]

This formulation departed from Sorokin’s original statement of Integralism in two important ways. The first modification concerns phases. In Social and Cultural Dynamics, Sorokin had described a sequence that had occurred twice in twenty-five hundred years: Ideational, Idealistic, Sensate. In this model, the Idealistic (Integral) phase would only occur when the Ideational was in decline and the Sensate was on the rise. In Basic Trends, however, Sorokin spoke of the possibility of moving directly from a disintegrating Sensate order to an Integral society, culture and personality type. The second modification concerns sources of change. In Dynamics, Sorokin built a powerful case for the primacy of internal (immanent) change and characterized external influences as generally of secondary importance. In Trends, by contrast, Sorokin seems to say that East and West can learn from one another, and can alter their own cultures in accordance with such learning: the West by emulating Eastern spirituality, and the East by assimilating Western empiricism. This means that in addition to the internal historical dialectic within civilizations there is a second dialectic between different cultural supersystems that can influence the internal dialectic. Interestingly, both dialectics have a self-correcting function that counteracts tendencies to overemphasize particular types of turth and value. Sorokin thus postulates a global cultural manifold within which multiple dialectics (or crosscultural dialogues) occur. In this way, Sorokin linked the immanent self-regulation of social systems to his earlier work on the mobility of cultural systems.^[21]

ROOTS IN RUSSIAN CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY

The fact that Sorokin was developing Integralism during his early Russian period points to the need to understand this socio-intellectual context, and to examine the selections that Sorokin made from popular currents of thought. The influence of Tolstoy has already been noted, and this, along with numerous passages in Sorokin’s later writings, indicates a strong orientation toward the Russian tradition of “intuitivism.” Indeed, Nicholas Lossky, a major exponent of intuitivism, was one of Sorokin’s collaborators on Social and Cultural Dynamics. In his own History of Russian Philosophy, Lossky provides an overview that is particularly helpful for purposes of this analysis.

The beginnings of independent philosophical thought in Russia date back to the Slavophils Ivan Kireyevsky and Khomyakov. Their philosophy is an attempt to overcome the German type of philosophizing on the strength of the Russian interpretation of Christianity based upon the works of the Eastern Fathers . . . . Neither Kireyevsky nor Khomyakov worked out a system of philosophy, but they set out the program and established the spirit of the philosophical movement which is the most original and valuable achievement of Russian thought--I mean the attempt of the Russian thinkers to develop a systematic Christian world conception. Vladimir Soloviev was the first to create a system of Christian philosophy in the spirit of Kireyevsky’s and Khomyakov’s ideas. He was followed by a whole galaxy of philosophers in the same line.^[22]

Ivan Vasilyevich Kireyevsky (1806-1864), reacting against the forced westernization of Russia under Peter the Great in the eighteenth century, wrote two influential works: On The Character of the Culture of Europe and Its Relationship to the Culture of Russia (1852), and On the Necessity and Possibility of New Principles for Philosophy (1856). Kireyevsky’s critiques were directed especially against abstract reason, which had been the ideal of the western Enlightenment that Peter desired to import. According to historian Frederick Copleston, Kireyevsky sought “integral knowledge” that differed sharply from the western model.

... he obviously means truth by which one can live, a truth grasped by the powers or faculties of the human being working in unison. Referring to scholasticism ... he asserts that this “endless, wearisome game of concepts . . . inevitably produced a general blindness in regard to those living convictions which lie above the sphere of reason and logic . . . “ These living convictions can be attained only by “a union of all spiritual forces,” by bringing together the distinct properties of the human psyche “into one indivisible whole.” In other words, apprehension of the truth which can guide us in life is a function not of any one isolated power or faculty . . . but of the whole human spirit, the human being considered as a unity.^[23]

Sorokin’s writings contain numerous indications that he was familiar with the works of Vladimir Solovyov (1853-1900), a second major exponent of intuitivism, who is best known for his conception of “Godmanhood.” The link between Solovyov and Sorokin is evident in the following passage by historian V. V. Zenkovsky:

Slavophilism, and Kireyevski in particular, impressed Solovyov deeply with the idea of “integral knowledge,” an idea which he first attempted to elaborate in an unfinished but remarkable fragment The Philosophical Principles of Integral Knowledge (1877). . . . the search for “total-unity,” for a synthesis of religion, philosophy, and science--of faith, thought, and experience--which is to answer the question: “What is the purpose of human existence in general? For what does mankind finally exist?” Solovyov is here speaking of mankind as a “single being.” “The subject of [historical] development is [all of] mankind as a real, though collective, organism.” “The culminating phase of historical development finds expression in the formation of a total life-organization,” an “integral life,” which will satisfy the needs of feeling, thought, and will.^[24]

Copleston provides a similar analysis of Solovyov’s thought that also indicates striking parallels with Sorokin’s later Integralism:

He argues . . . that the empiricists, in their reductive analysis into impressions, failed to grasp what actually exists and that pure empiricism, relying simply on sense experience, would fail to understand anything. At the same time he sees the development of rationalism as culminating in the reduction of being to pure thought. In their different ways both empiricism and rationalism fail to grasp what is, real being. Yet both express truths and correspond to real aspects of the human being. We cannot understand reality without sense-experience, and we cannot understand it without ideas or concepts and the rational discernment of relations. What is needed is a synthesis of complementary truths, of distinct principles.

In general, Solovyov saw the intellectual life of western man as having undergone a process of fragmentation. Not only had science, philosophy and religion become distinct spheres but they were often regarded as opposed to one another. . . . The creative activity of man as manifested in art was regarded as having no real relation to the pursuit either of truth or of the good. In brief, the unity of the truth, the good and the beautiful as different aspects of being had been lost sight of.^[25]

A third representative of the intuitivist perspective, Nikolai O. Lossky, was a professor at the University of St. Petersburg from 1907 until 1921, which includes the period of Sorokin’s study there. In 1922, Lossky, like Sorokin, settled in Prague, Czechoslovakia, where he carried on his research in the early 1930s for Volume Two of Sorokin’s Dynamics. As described by Copleston, Lossky’s treatment of religious experience resembles many passages in Sorokin’s later writings, particularly The Ways and Power of Love (1954) and other of his works on altruism:

In religious experience, Lossky maintains, the Absolute reveals itself as the living personal God and as the supreme value, goodness, truth, beauty in one. Further, revelation discloses to us God as the Trinity of Persons and Christ as the God-man. . . . the vocation of the human being is seen to be return to God, not by absorption but through participation in the life of the God-man, and the goal of history appears as realization of the kingdom of God.^[26]

INTEGRALISM, CHRISTIANITY AND CATHOLICISM

As noted at the outset, the relation of Sorokin’s Integralism with Christian and Catholic perspectives is complex and ambivalent. At certain points, the Christian dimension in Sorokin’s thought is unmistakable, as in the concluding passage of his major work:

Ahead of us lies the thorny road of the dies irae of transition. But beyond it there loom the magnificent peaks of the new Ideational or Idealistic culture as great in its own way as Sensate culture at the climax of its creative genius. In this way the creative mission of Western culture and society will be continued and once more the great sociocultural mystery will be ended by a new victory. Et incarnatus est de Spiritu sancto . . . et homo factus est . . . Crucifixus . . . Et resurrexit . . . Amen.^[27]

Sorokin’s approach also places great emphasis on the traditional concept of creation, especially in terms of human creativity as the driving force in history. This view accords well with the Christian vision of a personal God in whose image human beings were made. Consequently, Sorokin’s sociology would escape the critique of social science expressed in the 1993 papal encyclical, The Splendor of Truth (Veritatis Splendor):

A number of disciplines, grouped under the name of the “behavioral sciences,” have rightly drawn attention to the many kinds of psychological and social conditioning which influence the exercise of human freedom. . . . But some people, going beyond the conclusions which can be legitimately drawn from these observations, have come to question or even deny the very reality of human freedom.^[28]

Despite such concordance, there are many significant differences. In addition to those already mentioned, it is important to note that Integralism lacks a Christology and a notion of a universal church that is “one, holy, Catholic and apostolic.” Furthermore, it does not include authoritative credal statements, nor any conception of the teaching magisterium of the church. There is no treatment of salvation history, judgment or personal immortality, nor of divine intervention in human history, or the communion of saints. This also means that there is no eschatology of the end times of the earth.

The strongest link between Sorokin’s approach and Christianity is to be found in the ethos of love and the assertion that love is characteristic of supersensory, superrational being. Thus, speaking of “the mysterious energy of love,” in The Basic Trends of Our Times, Sorokin uses language reminiscent of the Apostle John:

In its cosmic-ontological aspect, altruistic love or Goodness, with Truth and Beauty, has been thought of as one of the three supreme forms of cosmic energy or reality or value operating not only in the human world but in the whole cosmos. Like the Christian Trinity--Father-Son-and Holy Ghost--Love-Truth-Beauty appear to be the highest values or energies inseparable but distinct from each other.

. . . In this trinity love is conceived as the unifying, integrating, and harmonizing cosmic power that counteracts the disintegrating forces of chaos, unites what is separated by enmity, builds what is destroyed by discord; creates and maintains the grand order in the whole universe. The familiar formula of practically all great religions “God is Love” and “Love is God,” is one variation of this cosmic conception of unselfish love.^[29]

This formulation also bears some resemblance to the sacramental view of the universe that has long been central to the Catholic perspective, that is, the understanding of the created order as a sign of transcendent reality.

There is, however, no logical necessity for asserting that supersensory, superrational reality is benevolent and loving. Indeed, it would be equally logical to characterize its nature as destructive, since planets, solar systems and galaxies must ultimately perish. Thus, Sorokin seems to have professed a Christian variant of Integralism, one which exhibits continuity with a long established tradition of Russian philosophy.

If this is so, then a Catholic variant might also be cultivated. Sorokin’s career provides glimpses of Integralism’s potential applications, especially in the fields of longterm sociocultural change and altruism (amitology). Building upon this work, others might develop an integralistic approach in diverse fields, such as the social psychology of personality development, peacemaking criminology, humanistic economic development, health and illness, international conflict resolution, counseling, education, and the sociology of religion. In each of these areas, it may be possible to develop a social science that takes account of human spirituality and recognizes the truth of faith as well as the truth of reason and of the senses.