Charles Cooley – Sociologist of Communication

There lies a massive untapped potential in the tradition of American pragmatist sociology. It is rich with brilliant insights and ideas, driven by a pursuit to understand and reframe the social in a novel way, and accompanied by an attitude of earnest discovery.

However, retrospectively, the era of pragmatist sociology was short and ambiguous. Short, as it lasted only from the beginning of the 20th century to the Second World War. Ambiguous, as it was left undeveloped and lacked any coherent general framework.

The untapped potential lies not only in revisiting the works of pragmatists like John Dewey (1859-1952), George Mead (1863-1931), and Charles Cooley (1864–1929), but most importantly in discovering the comprehensive framework that would unify the pragmatist tradition.

I believe Peirce’s philosophy serves as the glue that binds the pragmatist tradition together, corrects its shortcomings, and illuminates its discoveries.

The reason for the negligible role of Peirce in this tradition, lies in the fact that the pragmatist did not have access to most of Peirce’s manuscripts as they weren’t published until the 1930’s. At that time both Cooley and Mead had already passed away. Moreover, Peirce’s thought is hard to get into. Already in 1903 William James described Peirce’s lectures as “flashes of brilliant light relieved against Cimmerian darkness”.

However, over 100 years of Peirce scholarship has unraveled many complexities in his writing and provided numerous insights into his semiotics. As a result, we have now a much better understanding of Peirce than his contemporaries.

Despite the significant overlap between Peirce’s system of thought and the insights of the pragmatists, scholarly interest in uniting them is surprisingly limited. Most scholars concentrate on individual thinkers rather than pursuing a synthesis of ideas.

In this post, I aim to highlight the extensive overlap and potential for a general synthesis between Peirce and the pragmatist tradition by focusing on my favorite pragmatist sociologist, Charles Horton Cooley.

Semiotic Thinker?

Charles Horton Cooley was an American sociologist and a prominent figure in the development of sociology as a science in the United States. Born in Michigan, Cooley studied at the University of Michigan and later became a professor and spent his entire academic career there.

As far as I know, Charles Cooley didn’t have a direct connection to Peirce. However, Cooley breathed the same pragmatist air and were indirectly linked to Peirce through intermediaries such as William James and John Dewey.

Despite the lack of direct influence, the overlap with Peirce is staggering. One of the key intersections between Cooley and Peirce is the concept of communication, which, as already noted many times in the past, is synonymous with semiosis.

Actually, Cooley is considered a pioneer in communication studies. His 1894 dissertation, The Theory of Transportation, is likely the first American sociological publication to focus on communication as a central concept. In it, Cooley described the railway network as the “nervous system” of society. He later expanded his view, regarding communication as essential for the development of individuals, communities, and society.

For Cooley, society is a communicative process where no feature can be detached from the “larger life” that binds us all together. Cooley regards the communicative process – or semiosis – as the foundational structuring process of society.

“By Communication is here meant the mechanism through which human relations exist and develop – all the symbols of the mind, together with the means of conveying them through space and preserving them in time. It includes the expression of the face, attitude, and gesture, the tones of the voice, words, writing, printing, railways, telegraphs, telephones, and whatever else may be the latest achievement in the conquest of space and time. All these taken together, in the intricacy of their actual combination, make up an organic whole corresponding to the organic whole of human thought; and everything in the way of mental growth has an external existence therein.” Cooley, 1909, 61

This organic whole is the societal semiosis we all live in. Although Cooley did not directly address semiotics in his work, I would argue that he had a very semiotic view of reality:

“In a sense all objects and actions are symbols of the mind, and nearly anything may be used as a sign.” Cooley, 1909, 61 “There is, indeed, a world of signs outside of language, most of which, however, we may pass by, since its general nature is obvious enough.” Cooley, 1909, 76

Above all, it seems that Cooley sees signs as having agency, which means understanding semiosis as a process that transcends us, with goals and tendencies that extend beyond individuals and societies. In other words, signs are not human made arbitrary conventions, but part of a larger process that has a life of its own, a life that we participate with.

This is Peirce’s Copernican revolution, where thought precedes the thinker. Humans are no longer seen as the sole creators of thoughts and ideas, but rather as their mediators and caretakers. In the last analysis, we do not control and guide the development of ideas, but rather discover, are captivated by, and adapt to them.

Cooley seems to share this idea when discussing the development and life of thoughts and symbols. We are part of a stream of signs that precedes us and transcends us. Instead of creating various arbitrary sign systems, Cooley sees how…

“A word is a vehicle, a boat floating down from the past, laden with the thought of men we never saw; and in coming to understand it we enter not only into the minds of our contemporaries, but into the general mind of humanity continuous through time. The popular notion of learning to speak is that the child first has the idea and then gets from other a sound to use in communicating it; but a closer study shows that this is hardly true even of the simplest ideas, and is nearly the reverse of truth as regards developed thought. In that the word usually goes before, leading and kindling the idea – we should not have the latter if we did not have the word first. ”This way,” says the word, ”is an interesting thought: come and find it.” And so we are led to rediscover old knowledge. Such words for instance, as good, right, truth, love, home, justice, beauty, freedom; are powerful makers of what they stand for.” Cooley, 1909, 62, emphasis mine

For Cooley, society is an immense dynamic communicational system that constantly adapts to its environment. However, social processes and changes are not determined solely by the environment, individuals, or institutions. Rather, it is an interactive communicative process. The order and unity of society stem from a continuous interpretation and sharing of common meaning. Order is not a static social state but a creative and experimental process:

“We see around us in the world of men an onward movement of life. There seems to be a vital impulse, of unknown origin, that tends to work ahead in innumerable directions and manners, each continuous with something of the same sort in the past. The whole thing appears to be a kind of growth, and we might add that it is an adaptive growth meaning by this that the forms of life we see – men, associations of men, traditions, institutions, conventions, theories, ideals – are not separate or independent, but that the growth of each takes place in contact and interaction with that of others.” Cooley, 1918, 3

The Organic View

Cooley’s thinking is characterized by holism and comprehensiveness, where society is seen as an organic whole that cannot be reduced to the individual nor to the “structures”. Instead, our perspective should take into account all phases of human life. According to Cooley…

“A separate individual is an abstraction unknown to experience, and so likewise is society when regarded as something apart from individuals. The real thing is Human Life, which may be considered either in an individual aspect; but is always as a matter of fact, both individual and general. In other words,”society” and “individuals” do not denote separable phenomena, but are simply collective and distributive aspects of the same thing. The relation between them being like that between other expressions one of which denotes a group as a whole and the other the members of the group, such as the army and the soldiers, the class and the students, and so on.” Cooley, 1902, 36–37

Indeed, Cooley seems to share Peirce’s hypothesis of the ultimate continuity of reality – synechism. According to synechism, all phenomena share a common nature, which is why a synechist can never say, “I am altogether myself, and not at all you” (EP2: 2, 1893). The ultimate continuity among all existing things also enables communication (EP2: 3, 1893). Cooley speaks very much in the same tone:

All phases of mental life, may be looked at either in a particular or a general aspect. But there is no real separation; they are only different phases of the same thing. Cooley, 1902, 54

Once again, we see a fruitful relationship between thinkers. By this comparison, we make Peirce’s ideas more practical through Cooley’s perspective and clarify Cooley’s ideas through Peirce’s perspective. This reciprocal approach enhances our understanding of both.

Cooley’s concept of the “organic whole” means that our analysis must start with the entire picture. We need to begin with the overall impression of Human Life, without breaking it into parts or searching for its essence. In other words, we begin with the wholeness – 1stness.

After we experience this wholeness, we can begin to dissect it, identify contrasts, and analyze its parts and aspects. However, we must be careful not to view these parts as separate entities. Society is not simply a collection of individuals, nor are individuals merely the products of society. Instead, both exist on a shared semiotic/communicational continuum, representing different phases of a common life.

“Self and society go together, as phases of a common whole.” Cooley, 1909, 8–9

Surprisingly, Cooley’s thoughts seem to shed light on the Four Phases. For instance, Cooley explicitly discusses different “phases” of the mind. According to him, individual mind and societal mind are on a unified continuum, where phases cannot be absolutely separated from each other:

“If you fix attention on the individual phase of things and see life as a theatre of personal action, then the corresponding ideas of private will, responsibility, praise, and blame rise before you; if you regard its total aspect you see tendency, evolution, law and impersonal grandeur. Each of these is a half truth needing to be completed by the other; the larger truth, including both, being that life is an organic whole, presenting itself with equal reality in individual and general aspects.” Cooley, 1909, 20

Cooley speaks of particular (2ndness) versus general (3rdness), that is Perception and Experience Phases versus Understanding and Sharing Phases. In the former we concentrate on semiosis actualizing in particular minds, and in the latter we see tendencies and laws governing these actualizations.

Cooley also conceptualizes cultural structures–institutions, traditions, beliefs etc.–as crystallized habits, which is very Peircean language:

“The great institutions are the outcome of that organization which human thought naturally takes on when it is directed for age after age upon a particular subject, and so gradually crystallizes in definite forms – enduring sentiments, beliefs, custom and symbols.” Cooley, 1909, 313

This is the basic semiotic movement governing the whole cosmos, where habits grow and seek establish themselves.

Summary

Finally, I want to quickly reflect on Cooley’s central idea of communication which is the main point of contact with Peirce’s semiotics.

“I hold that the possibility of organizing large and complex societies on a free principle depends upon the quickness and facility of communication, and so has come to exist only in recent times.” Cooley, 1902, 429

In other words, the functioning of society depends on its level of communicative technology. The greater the “bandwidth” of communication, the larger and more “capable” the society becomes.

It’s clear that our current era represents a paradigm shift in communication. The internet, social media, and widespread sharing of audio and video are recent developments whose impacts are just beginning to manifest.

According to Cooley, we truly live in communication, and so the recent advances in communication technology profoundly impact every aspect of our lives. This transformation affects our entire Human Life and civilization, going far beyond mere advancements in everyday communicational practices.

During our information age, Cooley provides an interesting and insightful lens to see the society through the very process of communication:

“Thus the system of communication is a tool, a progressive invention, whose improvements react upon mankind and alter the life of every individual and institution. A study of these improvements is one of the best ways by which to approach an understanding of the mental and social changes that are bound up with them; because it gives a tangible framework for our ideas.” Cooley, 1909, 64