Duncan, Hugh Dalziel. Symbols in Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968.

Axiomatic Proposition 1:

Society arises in, and continues to exist through, the communication of significant symbols. (44)

By “significant symbol” we mean a symbol which not only “signals” to or “stimulates” another, but also arouses in the self the same meaning it does in others. (44)

Axiomatic Proposition 2: Man creates the significant symbols he uses in communication. (46)

The present, in which man communicates with other men, is the locus of social interaction. (47)

Axiomatic Proposition 3: Emotions, as well as thought and will, are learned in communication. (47)

Axiomatic Proposition 4: Symbols affect social motives by determining the forms in which the contents of relationships can be expressed. (48)

Images, visions, and all imaginings of the future are symbolic forms, for when the future becomes the present, and thus becomes “real,” new futures are created to guide our search for solutions to problems in the present which emerge as we try to create order in our relationships.

Axiomatic Proposition 5: From a sociological view motives must be understood as man’s need for order in his social relationships. (49)

Some kind of structure must exist in social relationships if we are to act at all. Such structures range from the loose informal ties of a small group sauntering down a street, to the highly formal “sacred” order of a religious body. (49)

Social forms, the ways in which we satisfy needs, determine the satisfaction of the needs. Needs are always satisfied in relationships; relationships, in turn, are possible only because we understand what people mean by the forms in which they play their roles. Role-playing is the enactment of a part in some kind of social drama which, from a purely sociological view, is a drama of order. Social drama is a drama of legitimating, the attempt to legitimize authority by persuading those involved that such order is “necessary” to the survival of the community. In personal relations, manners, customs, tradition, mores, and style are used to legitimize our right to purely social status. It is how we court, how we eat, how we rule and are ruled, how we worship, and even how we die, in short, the forms in which we act, that determine our feelings of propriety regarding our own actions and the actions of others. For it is through such forms that we interpret the meaning of actions performed by others, just as they interpret the meaning of our performance. Such forms, then, are the relationships between us. (49)

Axiomatic Proposition 6: Symbols are directly observable data of meaning in social relationships. (50)

All we know about the meaning of what happened, or is happening, in a social relationship is what someone says about its meaning. (50)

Interpretations of forces “beyond” symbols must still be interpretations of symbols. (50)

When we say that there is some reality in human relationships which lies “beyond” symbols, we are still bound by symbols in our “report” of the operations of the “extrasymbolic” phenomena we have observed. (51)

Axiomatic Proposition 7: Social order is expressed through hierarchies which differentiate men into ranks, classes, and status groups, and, at the same time, resolve differentiation through appeals to principles of order which transcend those upon which differentiation is based. (51)

Social order is always expressed in some kind of hierarchy. This differentiates men and women in ranks determined by age, sex, family lineage, skill, ownership, or authority, which are scaled in some kind of social ladder. Such differentiation is always resolved through appeals to some universal “higher” principle superior to local principles in which ultimate principles are “latent,” or struggling to perfection. (51)

Authorities seek to invest local symbols, the symbols of their institutions, class, or status groups, with universal symbols which are “above” local concern. This is done by persuading us that local symbols will guarantee social order because in using them we pass from a “lower” to a “higher” meaning. (52)

Axiomatic Proposition 8: Hierarchy is expressed through the symbolization of superiority, inferiority, and equality, and of passage from one to the other. (52)

In hierarchical relations we are superiors, inferiors, or equals, and we must be prepared to pass from one position to another as we are born, marry, age, and die. Positions of superiority, inferiority, and equality must be signified clearly, and we must be taught, as we must teach others, how to play roles as inferiors, superiors, and equals. (52)

Positions of superiority, inferiority, and equality are fixed, but only though passage from one to the other. Fixed social positions can be opened to new members, and can be filled with those who possess skills required for community survival. (52)

Axiomatic Proposition 9: Hierarchy functions through persuasion, which takes the form of courtship in social relationships. (53)

Superiors must persuade inferiors to accept their rule. This is done through the glorification of symbols of majesty and power as symbols of social order in many kinds of social dramas wherein the power and the glory of the ruler as a “representative” of some transcendent principle of social order is dramatized. Such dramatization is intended to create and uphold the dignity of the office as a representation of a principle of social order, not the man himself. (53)

Axiomatic Proposition 10: The expression of hierarchy is best conceived through forms of drama which are both comic and tragic. (59)

The social drama of hierarchy is both comic and tragic. Those in power present themselves as heroes struggling against villainous powers who seek to destroy sacred principles of social order. When we suffer deep guilt, or live in fear of defeat, we turn to tragedy, which is based on a principle of victimage. Tragic victims range from the public scapegoat on whom we project our evil to a guilty inner self whose punishment expiates our sin. (59)

Since the social appeal of tragedy is based on guilt and fear, and offers us vicarious atonement through the suffering and death of the sacrificial victim, its power is very great. We cannot live long in fear, any more than we can long endure a heavy burden of guilt. Public punishment of others, like public and private punishment of the self, is a kind of purgation. As we revile, torture, and kill a Negro, execute a criminal, or hunt down Jews to ship them off as victims for ritual cleansing of German blood in torture and death), we personify our fear and guilt. Because of such personification, we are able to act, as well as to feel, and to think, “about” our guilt. In social, political, and art dramas, we enact a drama of purgation, a drama in which dark fears are given forms, and thus brought into consciousness, so we can express attitudes and take part in actions necessary to the riddance of fear and guilt. Tragedy thrives on mystery; it makes its final appeal to ultimate and supernatural powers through invoking mysterious and dark powers with whom we seek to communicate even though we may believe that such powers are “beyond” communication. (60)

The social appeal of comedy is based on belief in reason in society. Comedy is sanctioned doubt, a permitted and honored way of expressing doubt over the majesty and wisdom of our superiors, the loyalty and devotion of our inferiors, and the trust of our friends. Comedy, like tragedy, punishes the “sine of pride,” but of pride against men, not the gods. Comedy teaches us that only so long as reason can function openly in society can men confront and correct their evil as men, not as cowering slaves or as worshipers of gods who “reveal” but do not communicate their truths to men. Comedy teaches that whatever separates men from men, not from the gods as in tragedy, is evil. The ultimate good in comedy is a social good which can be reached only so long as men can communicate freely as men. Comedy is never simply an “escape valve” or a way of “blowing off steam,” but a form in which we bring into consciousness the many incongruities between ends and the means employed to achieve them. Tyrannies and democracies alike use comedy for this purpose. (60)

Axiomatic Proposition 11: Social order is created and sustained in social dramas through intensive and frequent communal presentations of tragic and comic roles whose proper enactment is believed necessary to community survival. (60)

The community is kept alive only by intense and frequent reenactments of the roles believed necessary to social order. (60)

Social euphoria, born of laughter, depends our social bonds; simply being together in euphoric moments becomes a kind of communion. Comedy allows us to face problems in community life which we cannot face in any other way. To blaspheme against God brings swift and terrible punishment, but in jokes about gods, parents, and all authority, we are permitted to say things which do not threaten the majesty and mystery of our gods, even though their mystery is opened to doubt and inquiry. (61)

Social groups must stage themselves before audiences whose approval legitimizes their power. Audiences, in turn, must see the problems of community acted out in some kind of dramatic presentation, for it is only through the forms created in such action that community problems become comprehensible as actions. We learn to act, not simply by preparing to act, or by thinking “about” action, but by playing roles in various kinds of dramas. These roles begin in simple play, then pass to games, festivals, and ceremonies, and the formal dramas of art, until finally we end in rites which fix community values. (61)

Axiomatic Proposition 12: Social order is always a resolution of acceptance, doubt, or rejection of the principles that are believed to guarantee such order. (61)

Order in society comes from resolving conflicting claims to power. There are three basic modes of adjustment to those who seek to legitimize their power over us in the name of some social principle of social order. (61)

Criticism (in its various social forms) exists when a lack of congruity between means and ends is recognized, and when there is hope that such incongruities, once recognized, can be overcome. In democratic society the expression of difference in debate, discussion, and argument is not a way to discord but to a superior truth, because opposition, in competition and in rivalry, makes us think harder about the rights of others and leads us to act in more humane ways. It is our duty to disagree, if only to help our opponent, as we in turn expect him to disagree with us, for in doing so he tests our thought. Thus in our society, the ability to tolerate disagreement, and in turn, to develop skill in argument and disputation, is considered strength, not weakness. (62)

Theoretical Proposition 1: Social order, and its expression through hierarchy, is a social drama in which actors struggle to uphold, destroy, or change principles of order which are believed “necessary” to social integration. (63)

A community is created and sustained in the enactment of roles. The structure of social action is, therefore, a dramatic structure, and it becomes the task of sociology to create a dramatic model of sociation which can be applied to individuals acting in concrete situations with other individuals. (63-64)

From a sociological view, the drama of community is a drama of authority, a struggle by those in power, or those seeking power, to control symbols that are already powerful, or to create new symbols that will make orderly relationships that cannot be made orderly through the use of traditional or sacred symbols. (64)

A principle of social order must always be personified in some kind of dramatic action if it is to be comprehensible to all classes and conditions of men. (64)

Hierarchical struggle in resolved through purification of the crimes committed in the struggle to power. For the paradox of all authority is that it must uphold pure principles of hierarchy by impure means. In the struggle to attain and hold power we must kill or be killed, use magic (or, as we call it, propaganda) or have magic used against us, make pacts with those we hate or despise, or see our enemy make such pacts. And, most perplexing of all, we must explain how all powerful principles, as vested in gods, need to struggle at all; for when we struggle we admit our need to overcome an opponent who threatens our “absolute” power. But unless the principles of hierarchy are “pure,” they cannot be “absolute,” and, therefore, they cannot be invoked to resolve struggle. They must be in, and yet above, the battle. Thus, we torture, wound, and kill our enemies in the name of social order. We discipline and punish our children in the name of the family. We mortify the flesh through fasting and penance because such suffering “cleanses the spirit,” and “opens our hearts” to God. Any kind of violence, torture, and killing is believed “necessary” so long as we believe that it wards off threats to social order, or “purifies” the soul of evil which weakens us in our struggle to create and uphold the principles of social order. For, as we teach our young, our strength becomes as the strength of ten when our hearts are pure. (65-66)

Theoretical Proposition 2: Social differences are resolved through appeals to principles of social order believed to be ultimate and transcendent sources of order. (66)

Theoretical Proposition 3: The structure of social action involves five elements: (1) the stage or situation in which the act takes place; (2) the kind of act considered appropriate to upholding order in group life; (3) the social roles which embody social functions; (4) the means of expression used in the act; (5) the ends, goals, or values which are believed to create and sustain social order. (67)

Theoretical Proposition 4: All explanations which ground social order in “conditions,” “environments,” “the body,” “forces,” or “equilibrium,” are situational explanations. (70)

Theoretical Proposition 5: Social institutions are the most directly observable units of action in society. Eleven such basic units may be distinguished: these are (1) the family, (2) government, (3) economic institutions, (4) defense, (5) education, (6) manners and etiquette (pure forms of sociability), (7) entertainment, (8) health and welfare, (9) religion, (10) art, (11) science and technology. (71)

Theoretical Proposition 6: In analyzing social roles we ask: what function is supposed to be performed in what role, and how is this role played before various audiences? What style of life is involved in role enactment, and how is this style used in legitimize beliefs in certain forms of social order? (72)

Theoretical Proposition 7: Symbolic means of expression, the media in which we express ourselves, must be analyzed for their effect on what we communicate. (72)

Theoretical Proposition 8: Social action cannot be analyzed solely in terms of situation, institution, role, means of expression, or beliefs in certain principles of social order, but only in a synthesis of all five elements. (74)

Theoretical Proposition 9: Superiors, inferiors, and equals must expect disobedience, indifference, and disloyalty, and while those who control social order must teach us to feel guilt over the commission of such hierarchical “sins,” they must also provide us with ways of ridding ourselves of fear and guilt, so that we can act with confidence in the efficacy of the principles of social order under whose name we act. (75)

Theoretical Proposition 10: All hierarchies function through a “perfection” of their principles in final moments of social mystification which are reached by mountings from lower to higher principles of social order. (78)

Authorities turn to their artists and their priests to dignify and spiritualize their symbols of power, just as priests and artists turn to symbols of authority to add weight and resonance to their symbols. Certain symbols are used only to describe the celestial order. Others are used to depict the worldly social order, or to bridge sacred and secular realms. Symbols explicitly social may be implicitly celestial. Celestial symbols often gain their power and glory from social symbols of rank and office. In all such depictions there is movement, a progression from one level to another, the unfolding of hierarchy in symbolic action. (78)

In America, popular artists, and especially commercial artists, make use of a symbol – money – which has been heavily invested with glory. Like the Holy Grail, money has become radiant, mysterious, remote, and awesome. We believe that money brings success in courtship, dignity in citizenship, and majesty in social relations. We are encouraged to spend as individuals, as well as to enjoy vicariously money spent on public projects. We have few sumptuary laws over money; we often discuss human rights as the right to spend, and freedom itself as a free market. We are goaded into spending before we earn. In youth, as in adulthood, we are encouraged to impersonate plutocrats … We rent plutocratic clothes, equipage, cars, or a house in which we can stage a great entertainment organized by a caterer who supplies goods, service, and even guests. (78)

We learn from the use of money in our society that the power of celestial symbols does not lie in their remoteness, incomprehensibility, or exclusiveness, but in their communication of a promise to attain a “higher life.” Thus, while money makes us all equal under the sign of money, and individual spending is transformed into spending for the public good (as in our slogan, “spending for prosperity”), it is the promise of an ever-increasing standard of living which gives money its radiance and power. (79)

Where money has been spiritualized, as in our American capitalistic paradise, discontent over money is truly divine. (79)

Businessmen, scholars, priests, soldiers, lawyers, artists, politicians alike attempt to maximize the mystery of the symbols used to express the power of rank and office. Even the scholar, devoted to inquiry and reason, and by his vocation specifically against priestly mystification, retains awesome feudal ceremonials to infuse education with awe, wonder, and mystery. (79)

Theoretical Proposition 11: Five types of audiences are addressed in social courtship: these are, first, general publics (“They”); second, community guardians (“We); third, others significant to us as friends and confidants with whom we talk intimately (“Thou”); fourth, the selves we address inwardly in soliloquy (the “I” talking to is “Me”); and fifth, ideal audiences whom we address as ultimate sources of social order (“It”). (81)

Theoretical Proposition 12: The general public (“They) is a symbolization of the whole community. (93)

Theoretical Proposition 13: The community guardians (“We”) symbolize the conscience of the community. (95)

Theoretical Proposition 14: The significant other (“Thou”) is symbolized through dialogue in which the self is created and sustained. (100)

Theoretical Proposition 15: Soliloquy, like inner dialogue between the “I” and the “Me,” is the symbolization of role conflict in society. (105)

Theoretical Proposition 16: Principles of social order are grounded in ultimate principles of order which serve as the final audience in social address. (110)

Theoretical Proposition 17: Social order is legitimized through symbols grounded in nature, man, society, language, or God. (116)

Theoretical Proposition 18: Social Order, and its expression through hierarchy, is enacted in social dramas in which actors attempt to uphold, destroy, or change the principles of that social order. (123)

Theoretical Proposition 19: Hierarchical communication is a form of address (courtship) among superiors, inferiors, and equals. (127)

Theoretical Proposition 20: Disorder in society originates in disorder in communication. (130)

Theoretical Proposition 21: Social disorder and counter-order arise in guilt which originates in disobedience of those whose commandments are believed necessary to social order. (135)

Theoretical Proposition 22: Society must provide us with means to expiate guilt arising from sins of disobedience. (140)

Expiatory rites purge the individual of guilt over disobedience as they purge his society of the principle of evil which “caused” the disobedience. From an authoritarian social view man disobeys his superiors because of malign and evil powers which lead men to break the commandments of their lords; from the egalitarian view men disobey just laws because they are ignorant of the good life which obedience to such laws will bring. (140)

But whether authoritarian or democratic, a society rids itself of guilt and anxiety through the performance of various kinds of social dramas which make fear, anxiety, and guilt manageable. (140)

In ritual drama, we destroy guilt symbolically, but even in warfare, a highly motor phase of action, the defeat and death of an enemy is symbolized as a defeat and death of the evil principle which threatened our social order. (140)

Expiation is not achieved through argument or preaching, but through taking part in some kind of social drama in which we banish, punish, kill, or destroy something or somebody which personifies, and thus objectifies (in a dramatic sense), the principle that threatens social order. (141)

Expiation is purgation because it is an enactment. The principle of disorder is destroyed so that the principle of order may live. Expiatory killings range from the killing of real victims to the symbolic degradation and killing of a comic or grotesque figure whose death is greeted with laughter. (141)

Expiatory acts are both inner and outer, local and universal, individual and social, institutional and communal. But for inner, local, individual, and institutional expiation to be effective there must be final or ultimate expiatory acts which purge the social order itself. (141)

Theoretical Proposition 23: Victimage is the basic form of expiation in the communication of social order. (144)

The basic social function of atonement, in religious as well as social drama, is the re-establishment of communication with authorities who are believed to sustain social order. We do penance for our sins, as others appointed by the society do penance for us, to cleanse our spirit of disobedience so that we can communicate in purity of heart and mind, thus live again in order with our fellows because we are living in obedience to authority. (144)

It is not fear of punishment, but fear of being out of communication with those who create a sense of order in our world which is unbearable. (144)

Symbolic victimage in tragic and comic art differs from social victimage as we experience it in war, the execution of criminals, or other forms of staging power through violence. Society uses art as well as religion to create attitudes which dispose us to act in certain ways. (146)

The “perfect” victim is one whose power is so great that we must summon all our energy, cunning, skill, luck, and piety, to defeat him, or one so beloved that in sacrificing him we give up something of great value. (146)

Beside the “perfect” victim stand many “imperfect” or partial victims, and in a highly competitive society such as ours, one man’s hero may be another’s villain. (147)

Theoretical Proposition 24: Victimage of the self is determined by social victimage. (147)

We learn to act toward the self as we learn to act toward others. We address inner as we do outer selves. When I stop writing this page to read what I have written, I take the role of an audience over against the self which has just stopped writing. (149)

Methodological Proposition 1: All statements about the structure and function of the symbolic act must be demonstrated to exist in the symbolic context of the act. (151)

The “social facts” of symbolic action (in either purely symbolic acts, as in drama, or phases of action where symbols are used, as in business or war) are the symbols themselves. Unless ew assume that symbols simply fall into random patterns, or that symbolic meaning ids determined by extra-symbolic factors (biological, economic, or religious, as the case may be), we must explain how symbols function as symbols. This is not to say that meaning in society I the same as meaning in symbols, but only to stress that the function of symbols as symbols must be taken into account whenever we discuss social relationships in any context or experience. (152)

Symbols are the most easily, and the most directly, observable “facts” in human relationships, for they are the forms in which relationships take place. (151)

Methodological Proposition 2: Sociological explanations of symbols must be grounded in the analysis of social drama as a drama of hierarchy. (151)

Methodological Proposition 3: The staging of an act in society is a social drama of authority which we analyze by asking: where, or under what conditions, is the act being presented? What kind of act is it? What kind of actors are selected for what kind of roles? What means or instruments do the actors use to communicate authority? And how is the expression of hierarchy related to a principle of social order? (161)

Methodological Proposition 4: Stage, act, role, means, and the principle of social order invoked as a determinant of social order, are linked in various ways in social drama: ten types of linkage may be distinguished. (166)

(a) Stage-Act. All statements which ground social motives in conditions, backgrounds, environments, natural laws, “objective situations,” existential conditions, historical necessity, equilibrium, or any spatio-temporal image, and the act are defined in terms of each other. (166)

(b) Stage-Role. In this linkage, social conditions are said to call for roles in keeping with the stage, and the stage in turn, is depicted as in keeping with the role. (166)

(c) Stage-Means. This linkage is common to all beliefs in “ways” of acting, “styles of life,” or “media of communication” (as when we say, following Marshall McLuhan, that “the medium is the message”), as determinants of social motives. (166)

(d) Stage-Principle of Social Order. When the principle of social order is made part of the situation under which we act, stage and principle are linked. (166)

(e) Act-Principle of Social Order. When a soldier tells us war is necessary to purify the race, or a scientist teaches that science alone can save the community, or we are told that any kind of act will in itself insure community survival, and will do so “inevitably,” it is assumed that some principle of order, as invested in a certain kind of action, will itself determine social integration without the intervention of the actor playing social roles, or conditioning by the environment or scene, or the effect of certain forms of communication. (167)

(f) Act-Role. Here we explain an action by the character of the role, as in the religious “charisma” of the holy man. (167)

(g) Act-Means. When means, or how we do something, is said to determine the act, we assume a reciprocal relationship between how we do something and what is done. (168)

(h) Role-Principle of Social. In this linkage, we say that some quality in the social role of the actor determines a principle of social order. (168)

(i) Role-Means. Here we say that roles and the tools, instruments, means, and agency used in role-enactment determine each other. (168)

(j) Means-Principle of Social Order. When instruments or techniques become ends, as when we hear that operations determine concepts, that is, how we record temperature is our concept of temperature, or in social action, as when we say “manners make the man,” means become social ends. (168)

Methodological Proposition 5: In symbolic analysis of social drama we ask: in the struggle for power within an institution, who evokes what symbols of authority? In what kind of action? By what means? Under what conditions? And in the name of what transcendent power is authority legitimized? (169)

Methodological Proposition 6: Themes and plots in social drama may be studied by noting moments of transformation as well as fixed moments of belief in the drama of social hierarchy. (170)

Methodological Proposition 7: The ways in which audiences are addressed in social drama offer many clues to the distribution of authority. (171)

Methodological Proposition 8: There are seven basic forms of social drama: these are games, play, parties, festivals, ceremonies, drama, and rites. (173)

Methodological Proposition 9: Childhood play is the first experience of social address. (176)

Methodological Proposition 10: Games teach us the power of rules as a form of social order. (177)

Methodological Proposition 11: In parties and social gatherings we learn to relate on a purely social basis through manners. (179)

Methodological Proposition 12: Festivals increase social integration by creating joy in fellowship. (181)

Methodological Proposition 13: Ceremonies are social dramas in which we seek to uphold the dignity and majesty of social roles believed necessary to social order. (183)

Methodological Proposition 14: Rites are social dramas in which collective sentiments are fixed through communication with supernatural powers who are believed to sustain social order. (184)

Methodological Proposition 15: Drama depicts social action as a symbolic action to be judged by principles of order believed necessary to order in society. (189)

Methodological Proposition 16: The staging of an act in society is a social drama of authority in which the relationship between ends and the means must be kept under constant review through criticism. (191)

Methodological Proposition 17: Relationships between authorities, symbol manipulators, public, and critics, may be determined by asking to what degree communication between and among them is open or closed. (193)

Methodological Proposition 18: The primary type of relationship between authority, symbol manipulators, critics, and audiences exist within face-to-face groups. (194)

Methodological Proposition 19: A second type of relationship occurs whenever a status group, class, institution, or society seeks to monopolize communication. (195)

Methodological Proposition 20: A third type of relationship occurs whenever critics judge in terms of craft principles.

Methodological Proposition 21: In a fourth type of relationship the critic conceived of his role in terms of communicating directly to the public, and acts as a delegate of this public to the artist. (196)

Methodological Proposition 22: In a fifth type of relationship, authorities, artists, publics, and critics assume a mutual responsibility for the creation, distribution, and use of what they consider to be the best kinds of symbolic expression. (197)

Methodological Proposition 23: Basic functions in society must be dramatized before they can be communicated as actions. (199)

Methodological Proposition 24: Authorities relate family life to social order through the depiction of courtship, marriage, and parenthood as a preparation for citizenship in the community. (201)

Methodological Proposition 25: Symbols of government must be dramatized as symbols of social order. (202)

Methodological Proposition 26: Authorities must create and sustain ways of making, distributing, and consuming food, clothing, and shelter, according to beliefs in the right of superiors, inferiors, and equals to share in these services. (206)

Methodological Proposition 27: To understand authority we must observe what kind of social drama is mounted by the military, the police, and the intelligence services used by each. (208)

Methodological Proposition 28: The basic function of education is the transmission of traditions, customs, and sentiments which are believed necessary to social order and, at the same time, the creation of methods of inquiry which will help us to solve problems we must solve if the community is to survive.

Methodological Proposition 29: Forms of sociation in themselves become transcendent ultimates in social relations, as we see in manners, etiquette, and play. (212)

Methodological Proposition 30: In play we learn to subordinate ourselves to rules, and to “internalize” the meaning of roles. (214)

Methodological Proposition 31: Health is symbolized by authorities as a means to increased group participation. (215)

Methodological Proposition 32: Religious invocation of the supernatural, the way in which we communicate with our gods to infuse social order with supernatural power, is a basic form of social integration. (217)

Methodological Proposition 33: Art creates symbolic roles which we use as a dramatic rehearsal in the imagination of community roles we must play to sustain social order. (222)

Methodological Proposition 34: Science raises problem-solving to an ultimate value by making methods used in problem-solving a guide to social action. (228)

Methodological Proposition 35: The final and most powerful moment in the drama of authority is the invocation of the ultimate power which upholds social order and thus wards off threats to the survival of the community. (234)