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Title Pages

Researching Religion: Why We Need Social

Science
Steve Bruce

Print publication date: 2018

Print ISBN-13: 9780198786580
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: August 2018
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198786580.001.0001

Title Pages
Steve Bruce

(p.i) Researching Religion (p.ii)

(p.iii) Researching Religion

(p.iv)

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,

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Title Pages

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Page 2 of 2
Preface

Researching Religion: Why We Need Social

Science
Steve Bruce

Print publication date: 2018

Print ISBN-13: 9780198786580
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: August 2018
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198786580.001.0001

(p.v) Preface
Steve Bruce

A few words about the background to this book may help the reader understand
its tone and its purpose. It is an end-of-career work: a summation of everything
about theory and method I wish I had said to my students. It is argumentative. In
part that is a function of a personality that in previous centuries would have
been described as dyspeptic or bilious. Until relieved of my gall bladder by the
National Health Service I was often literally those things, but I have always been
them metaphorically. Most of what I want to say about the use of social science
theory and methods is a product of disagreeing with others. I try to make my
case positively, but it is impossible to avoid entirely a critical tone when the best
way of showing why we should study religion in this way is to demonstrate that
doing it that way leads to error.

It must be said that many of the studies I criticize are, in many respects,
excellent. The cheap shot has sometimes proved irresistible, but more often I
have engaged critically with the work of scholars I respect because there is little
merit in shooting fish in a barrel; it is much more productive to work out how
good work could have been better.

Like writing a book on prose style, authoring a critical commentary on research

begs colleagues to find holes in one’s own positions, so I should stress that,
when I refer to my own research in what follows, it is not because it is flawless
but because I am familiar with its flaws.

A paper that I co-wrote thirty years ago with the late Roy Wallis on the use of
what people say about their actions in explanation was subtitled ‘defending the
common-sense heresy’. I am reminded of that subtitle when I pass by the
University of Aberdeen’s portrait of Thomas Reid. One of the lesser lights of the

Page 1 of 2
Preface

Scottish Enlightenment, Reid was appointed to a chair at Aberdeen in 1752, 240

years before I enjoyed the same privilege. While here he wrote his 1764 classic
An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense. I cannot
claim to have been much influenced by Reid, whose (p.vi) main concern was to
reconcile secular philosophy with Presbyterian Christianity, but I was struck by
the good sense of the following:

If there are certain principles, as I think there are, which the constitution
of our nature leads us to believe, and which we are under a necessity to
take for granted in the common concerns of life, without being able to give
a reason for them—these are what we call the principles of common sense;
and what is manifestly contrary to them, is what we call absurd.1

I take from that two general principles. First, we should resist theoretical and
methodological postures that require us to deny abilities we routinely display in
our everyday lives. Yes, it is hard to disentangle people’s motives from the
accounts they later give of their actions, but every day we do exactly that when
we listen to a student’s hard-luck story about the dog eating her essay or a child
explaining why she had to take the car without first asking permission. Second,
we should avoid taking seriously scholarly postures that do not inform the
advocate’s day-to-day life. The day I meet postmodernists whose relativism does
not disappear the minute they start talking about salaries and workloads is the
day I will take relativism seriously.

There is no false modesty in saying that there is nothing new in what follows.
Every principle and practice that I advocate or defend was once a standard part
of the social science armoury. That any of it needs restating is a result either of a
lack of preparation (in the case of those arts-trained scholars of religion who
stray into matters best understood with the tools of social science) or of an
unfortunate fondness for novelty (in the case of social scientists who dismiss
their predecessors as fools or knaves). Insofar as this contribution to the study of
religion has a programme, it is to recover the tendrils of common sense from the
absurdities that threaten to choke the social scientific study of religion.

Finally, this is not a research manual but a reflection of principles that should
underlie such manuals: more of a ‘why’ than a ‘how to’ book.

Notes:
(1) T. Cuneo and R. van Woudenberg (eds), The Cambridge Companion to
Thomas Reid. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 85.

Page 2 of 2
Acknowledgements

Researching Religion: Why We Need Social

Science
Steve Bruce

Print publication date: 2018

Print ISBN-13: 9780198786580
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: August 2018
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198786580.001.0001

(p.vii) Acknowledgements
Steve Bruce

Much of what follows has been initially explored in previous publications and I
am grateful to Oxford University Press, which has published many of my books,
and to various journals for the opportunity to air my views. Many topics have
also been discussed in conference and seminar presentations, and I am grateful
to the organizers of, and participants in, all such events for the stimulus they
provide.

My working life has been spent in just two institutions: The Queen’s University
of Belfast and the University of Aberdeen. I am hugely indebted to both for
allowing me to teach in fields that intrigued me and for allowing me time to
pursue my research interests. The University of Virginia, Charlottesville, and the
University of Edinburgh hosted me during periods of research leave. At various
times, my research has been supported by the Economic and Social Research
Council (ESRC), the Nuffield Foundation, the Leverhulme Trust, and the
Carnegie Trust for the Scottish Universities. I am particularly grateful to the
ESRC both for funding my research on loyalist paramilitaries in Northern
Ireland and for disguising the nature of that research.

My primary intellectual debts are owed to David Martin and Bryan Wilson. They
are frequently treated as competing and they certainly differed over much of
what is now known as the secularization thesis, but I learnt a great deal from
both. I also benefited enormously at Stirling University from the graduate
supervision of Roy Wallis, who appointed me to a lectureship at Queen’s
University in 1978. His work on new religious movements was an inspiration,
but of greater enduring impact was his sage advice on theory and methods. In

Page 1 of 2
Acknowledgements

recent years I have benefited greatly from the statistical skills of two congenial
collaborators: Tony Glendinning and David Voas.

An underrated source of encouragement and inspiration is the casual chat one

enjoys with colleagues in a good department. To borrow the well-known
quotation from Thomas Hobbes, the life of an academic may not be nasty,
brutish, and short but it is certainly solitary, and corridor conversations with
colleagues are important sources of affirmation and stimulus. I am fortunate to
have shared a (p.viii) corridor with two very able young scholars: Marta
Trzebiatowska and Andrew McKinnon.

Finally, I must acknowledge two groups of people who have made my work
possible. The staff of a large number of libraries, archives, and local records
offices have helped me find relevant historical material for my research. Less
easy to identify but every bit as important is the very large number of people in
the UK and the USA who have invited me to their services, workshops, and
therapy sessions, chatted to me about their beliefs, replied at length to my
questions, fed me artery-clogging amounts of home baking, and, I hope, helped
me to a better understanding of religion in the Western world. Naming them
would be impossible, but without such generosity there would be no social
science research and no opportunity to reflect on its methods and theories.

Page 2 of 2
List of Figures and Tables

Researching Religion: Why We Need Social

Science
Steve Bruce

Print publication date: 2018

Print ISBN-13: 9780198786580
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: August 2018
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198786580.001.0001

(p.x) List of Figures and Tables

Steve Bruce

Figure
5.1. Locations matrix 109

Tables
3.1. Belief in God, Great Britain, 1990 and 2000 (%) 53
3.2. Belief in God and self-description as religious, spiritual, or neither,
Scotland, 2001 (%) 53
10.1. Church involvement in three Durham mining areas, 1851–1941 (%
of adult population) 223

Page 1 of 1
Prelude

Researching Religion: Why We Need Social

Science
Steve Bruce

Print publication date: 2018

Print ISBN-13: 9780198786580
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: August 2018
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198786580.001.0001

Prelude
Basic Principles of Social Research

Steve Bruce

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198786580.003.0001

Abstract and Keywords

So that its positive elements are not lost in the detailed critiques of errors in the
study of contemporary religion, this prelude lists and briefly justifies seven basic
principles that should guide the researcher. Before we can explain people’s
beliefs and behaviour, we need to understand them. As talk is cheap, we should
study what people do as well as what they say. Participation is always helpful
because joining in activities allows us to check that we understand them.
Although we should always be interested in how people see the world and hence
should listen to them, we must always be sceptical of what we are told. We
should always consider how representative are our subjects. We should hesitate
to attribute to others motives we would not impute to ourselves. And, most
importantly, we should always be polite and show gratitude to those we study.

Keywords: principles of social research, understanding, participant observation, study of religion,

contemporary religion

Many general research texts, because they wish to appeal to the widest possible
market, are inclusive; they treat all forms of social research as if they were of
similar merit. This book is exclusive and offensive; it presents a particular vision
of social science through a series of arguments. It could well have been entitled
‘Mistakes and how to Avoid them’. So that its positive principles are apparent, I
summarize them here.

Page 1 of 4
Prelude

1. Understanding matters. Before we can explain beliefs and behaviour, we must

understand them, and it is generally a good idea to begin by listening to the
people we want to understand. Direct conversation is obviously the primary
method for communicating with the living (and that is often better done by
sidling up to people for casual chats than by formally interviewing them), but for
large numbers we have the sample survey, and even the dead can be heard in
the fragmentary remains of their talk: chapel minute books, letters,
autobiographies, recordings, diaries, and the like.

2. Actions speak louder than words. An obvious problem of the survey

questionnaire (and every other record of talk) is that it costs people nothing to
assert that they believe this or that or have done this or that and sometimes they
straightforwardly lie. Hence, if possible, we should always be interested in what
people actually do. We watch and we try to devise measures of activities. And
follow the money: one of the best way to understand people’s priorities is
through studies of expenditure.

3. If you can, join in. Most religious groups are only too happy to welcome new
participants, and a great deal of what they do is patently (p.2) public rather
than private. Participation is a good way of learning people’s culture and thus
complements my first two principles. Being able to produce a competent
performance of taking part in a church service or group meditations is some
reassurance that we understand at least minimally what is going on. The ethical
issues of covert and disguised participation are discussed in Chapter 6. Here I
will say only that many commentators on research are more precious about this
than are the people they purport to protect.

4. Always be sceptical. A principled commitment to listening to those we wish to

understand does not mean that we should be credulous; after all, there is ample
evidence that people dissemble, even to themselves. Nor does it mean we should
act as spokesperson for those we study. For reasons elaborated in Chapter 7, we
should always think about what interests might be in play when respondents talk
about their religious beliefs and actions. We should be even more sceptical about
second-hand reports of what people believe or do. It does not concern religion,
but the following is too good an example of credulity to miss. The Sunday
Telegraph reported: ‘A fetish sex website … is getting thousands of visits each
month from computers used by MPs, peers and their staff at Westminster. One
such site was visited over 3,000 times in a month; another over 100,000 times.’1
The scale of those numbers should have raised doubts, but newspapers did not
want to lose a good story by thinking too hard about that. The correct
explanation, of course, was not a sudden outburst of prurient licentiousness
among our elected representatives. It was that a bot, which someone had
accidentally allowed to implant itself in the House of Commons computer

Page 2 of 4
Prelude

system, was automatically linking to porn websites. The old adage remains
relevant: if it is too good to be true, it is probably not true.

As well as being sceptical of reports of people’s beliefs and actions, we should

also be aware that we can rarely treat our research subjects as though they
were experts on anything other than themselves, and sometimes they are not
even that.

5. Consider how representative are your subjects or whom they can plausibly
represent. This is particularly a problem for qualitative or ethnographic
research. Quantitative researchers are familiar with the need to study samples
of people that are representative of the wider population to which they wish to
generalize, and they have well-practised techniques for deriving representative
samples.2 In the (p.3) natural sciences the ideas generally come first and the
research is designed to test them. Social researchers often start with only some
vague notion of what might be interesting or informative about their subjects,
hoover up as much information as they can, and then see what explanatory
arguments might be illuminated by their data. There is nothing wrong with this,
except (a) missing data and (b) inappropriate generalization. To the extent we
have no idea beyond vague curiosity to guide our observations, it is always likely
we will miss something that later turns out to be important. I spent hours in a
far distant records office noting figures for Church of England Easter Day
communicants from parish registers of services in order to chart the changing
popularity of churchgoing in Hertfordshire village. Only later did I realize that,
over my time period, taking communion at Christmas Eve grew to outstrip
Easter Sunday in popularity. I had to go all the way back and record the
Christmas figures. In order to understand the appeal of Pentecostalism, we may
well study one Pentecostal congregation and treat the people we come to know
well in it as if they were representative of the whole congregation and as if that
congregation was representative of Pentecostal churches. Moreover, in claiming
that the presence or absence of some social characteristic explains why
Pentecostalism does or does not appeal, we may be generalizing about the entire
population. We always need to think just how far we can generalize from our
sample survey or from our study of twenty white witches.

Some topics are so well worked over that we have very large amounts of
evidence; for example, about the proportions of the population that go to church,
that grew up Muslim, or that believe in life after death. We can be far less
confident about why people are drawn to Wicca, even if we have spent a year
with a coven. There is nothing wrong with saying ‘My research leads me to
hypothesize that witches tend to be x, y, and z’. All too often, however,
researchers write ‘Witches are x, y, and z’, with only a grudging concession that
their study is limited to one very small group of people.

Page 3 of 4
Prelude

6. Be reluctant to impute to those you are trying to understand motives you

would not impute to yourself. In many ways the social sciences fall short of the
natural sciences, but we do have the advantage that we and the people we study
share a common humanity. Our research subjects may indeed be quite unlike us,
but more often they are more like us than we may realize; simply asking
ourselves whether whatever (p.4) we are writing would sound plausible as an
explanation of our own beliefs and actions should prevent egregious nonsense. It
is also worth bearing in mind, as we write, how our report would read to one of
the people we are observing and explaining. All too often I read research papers
in which those described seem like credulous fools. If we do not think of
ourselves as credulous fools, we should be reluctant to suppose it of others.

7. Be polite and show gratitude. Finally, we must remember that our research
subjects are doing us a favour. Our intrusion into their lives is very unlikely to do
them any harm, but equally well it almost never does them any good. If
approached in the right spirit (think ‘fulsome expressions of gratitude’), people
are surprisingly willing to give time and effort to explaining themselves or to
directing us to useful research resources. We should never leave them feeling
exploited.

Notes:
(1.) Sunday Telegraph, 22 September 2013.

(2.) Finding representative samples for surveys has become increasingly

difficult. In the last two decades of the twentieth century it was a commonplace
that the young and dispossessed were difficult to survey because they were hard
to contact or reluctant to take part, but by 2017 pollsters were finding that ‘of
every ten people in rich countries they contact, at least nine now refuse to
talk’ (‘Democracy’s Whipping Boy’, The Economist, 17 July 2017).

Page 4 of 4
The Value of Social Science

Researching Religion: Why We Need Social

Science
Steve Bruce

Print publication date: 2018

Print ISBN-13: 9780198786580
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: August 2018
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198786580.001.0001

The Value of Social Science

Steve Bruce

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198786580.003.0002

Abstract and Keywords

Many elements of religious studies (expounding beliefs or interpreting texts, for
example) have no need of social science, but as soon as we make assertions
about changes in the popularity of religion, or of certain types of religion, or say
why certain sorts of people are more likely than others to be religious, then we
stray into territory that can be mapped only with the techniques of social
science. This chapter presents a series of ‘things we cannot know unless we do
numbers’ and, by answering the most common criticisms of what is now derided
as ‘positivism’, makes the case for an old-fashioned scientific view of social
science.

Keywords: positivism, relativism, bias, big data, statistics

Introduction
Religion may fascinate even those who have little of it. Most liberal democracies
are considerably less religious now than they were in 1900, but, if for no other
reason than that we argue about its remaining privileges, religion remains
important in those societies, and it is obviously still a powerful social force in the
rest of the world. There are, of course, different ways of being interested in
religion, and social science has little to contribute to many of them. Religious
apologists, for example, who simply want to advertise their faith to a sceptical
audience can do so without coming close to social science. But when they try to
make their product more attractive by claiming that it is growing in popularity,
or that it is increasingly attractive to young people, or that it is socially
beneficial, then they require the tools of social science.

Page 1 of 29
The Value of Social Science

Compared to the Germans or Americans, the British seem unusually resistant to

social science. Tory government ministers believe that a good education requires
Latin and Greek but not sociology, political science, or statistics. The editor of a
leading current affairs magazine begins an article by asking: ‘Which is the better
way of learning fundamental truths about life’ and offers only two options:
‘reading great philosophers or reading great novelists?’1 Novelists, great or
otherwise, are often taken to be reliable reporters. Lara Feigel’s The Love
Charms of Bombs: Restless Lives in the Second World War, for example, sounds
like social history: it is actually a study of the lives and works of six novelists. A
reviewer questioned Feigel’s wisdom in treating her writers’ novels as
biographical source material.2 She might have raised the bigger question of why
we should treat novels (or novelists) as historical source material. We could
make a good case that descriptions of mundane matters—the (p.6) detail that
fills in the background of novels—can be treated as reliable reportage because
the contemporaneous author is likely both to know them and to have little
reason to distort them. Arnold Palmer’s Moveable Feasts: Fluctuations in
Mealtimes uses novelists’ accounts of the timing and contents of meals to
produce an excellent history of changes in eating habits.3 But, for matters less
mundane, fiction seems an unlikely source of fact, and yet the British reading
classes prefer it to social science.

The second important element of the background to British studies of religion is

a particular consequence of our largely secular culture. Because there are fewer
religious people in Britain than in the USA, and because religion itself seems
less important, British social scientists are less likely than their US counterparts
to study religion. This in turn means that relatively more of the contemporary
research on religion is produced by religious professionals who have been drawn
into asking questions for which their disciplinary background offers little
training.

Interdisciplinary research is often excellent, and, though this book is a defence

of social science, I am not particularly precious about sociology. As Philip
Abrams said: ‘it is the task that commands attention not the disciplines’.4 But
academic disciplines are not shipping flags of convenience. They have discrete
bodies of knowledge, repertoires of questions, and specialist skills, and the three
are necessarily linked. In order to know certain things one has to ask certain
things and be able to do certain things. People who have little experience of
designing and managing attitude surveys, for example, are more likely
inadvertently to produce unrepresentative results than people with such
experience. A major twenty-first-century project to assess the religious beliefs of
English university students found over half describing themselves as religious or
spiritual and just over a quarter describing themselves as Christian. Of those,
almost three-quarters had attended church regularly. That is, some 18 per cent
of students were regular churchgoers. This was presented as evidence of the
enduring, or even growing, popularity of religion among young people. And it
Page 2 of 29
The Value of Social Science

would indeed be a remarkable finding when many other sources tell us that
around 7 per cent of English adults regularly attend church and that they are
disproportionately elderly. Unfortunately, the survey had a response rate of only
9.4 per cent to an email questionnaire sent to a sample of universities, which
included a disproportionate number of former Church of England training
colleges in quiet rural towns. The students who were invited to complete the
questionnaires were randomly (p.7) selected, but it is almost certain that
students who were religious or spiritual were more likely to respond than
students who were indifferent or hostile to religion. Even worse, there was
nothing to prevent early responders (such as members of religious student
societies) encouraging their friends to complete the questionnaire. The results
have considerable value for understanding the people who completed the forms,
but they can tell us nothing about English university students in general.5

If one purpose of this book is to establish the relevance of social science for the
study of religion, a second is to promote a particular kind of social science. The
distinction between qualitative and quantitative research is often exaggerated,
especially when those research styles are attached to ancient and unresolved
arguments about ontology and epistemology or, in English, the nature of the
world and the proper form of its study.6 That philosophers cannot agree suggests
there is very little point in us now joining those debates. Nonetheless, we have
to understand some of those arguments, and I will, where necessary, explain
them and suggest pragmatic responses. All that needs to be said at this point is
that British studies of religion are far more likely to be based on qualitative than
quantitative research and that this creates a number of shortcomings that
should be addressed.7 This does not mean that I denigrate ethnography, have a
principled preference for descriptions in numbers rather than words, or lack
interest in what sense people make of their religious beliefs. It does mean that
the sort of social science often derided as positivism is essential for some of our
work.

The book has a third purpose. Although its primary focus is social research, its
examples are drawn from studies of religious belief and behavior, and so it also
presents a very large number of what I hope are interesting and important
observations about the nature of religion in the modern world.

In this chapter I want to make the case for social science in the study of religion.
In later chapters I will pursue these topics in greater detail.

In Defence of de Facto Positivism

W. G. Runciman suggests we can usefully distinguish four tasks of the social
scientist: reportage, description, explanation, and evaluation.8 We can report on
events, situations and occurrences: what happened (p.8) in Paris in 1792? We
can describe how the participants felt or understood their situations: what did
the revolutionaries think they were doing? We can explain why things happened:

Page 3 of 29
The Value of Social Science

what were the causes of the French Revolution? And we can morally evaluate
actions: were the consequences good or bad? For reasons discussed in detail in
Chapter 5, I am less sure than Runciman about the fourth task. I take the third—
explanation—to be the primary goal of the social scientist. But we have to be
clear about what we are explaining; hence accurate reportage and a clear grasp
of our subjects’ understanding of their situation, motives, intentions, beliefs, and
values are essential first steps.

But how should we approach these tasks? In the early days of social science
there was, as the name suggests, a consensus that we should emulate the
methods of the natural sciences. We could not often experiment, but the logic of
developing and testing ideas that had served the study of chemicals well could
do the same for the study of people. There was a lively debate in Germany
around the end of the nineteenth century over the nature of the human or social
sciences.9 Herbert Blumer in Chicago spent the 1950s arguing against
emulating the natural sciences.10 But it was with the massive growth in the
social sciences in the 1960s that such competing perspectives as symbolic
interactionism, Marxism, and later feminism and postmodernism proliferated,
and the roof fell in on positivism.

The errors of positivism are now legend; its critics legion. And yet, I will argue,
there is no alternative to a pragmatic positivist approach if we wish to produce
testable propositions about the real world. The de facto positivism that I believe
to be inescapable differs considerably from the grand vision of Auguste Comte
and might best be described as the bastard child of Emile Durkheim and Max
Weber.11 It is an ugly beast that will satisfy no philosopher of science, but it
describes pretty well what most of us who study naturally occurring social
phenomena actually do.

Positivism is that approach to knowledge characterized by all or most of the

following:

1. the aim to produce linguistic or numerical theoretical statements;

2. a concern with the logical structure and coherence of these
statements;
(p.9) 3. an insistence that at least some of these statements be testable;
4. ‘testable’ here meaning verifiable, confirmable, or falsifiable by the
systematic observation of reality;
5. the belief that science is cumulative,
6. and trans-cultural, and
7. rests on results that can be separated from the personality or social
position of the investigator;
8. the belief that science contains theories or research traditions that can
talk to each other;

Page 4 of 29
The Value of Social Science

9. the belief that science sometimes incorporates new ideas that are
discontinuous from old ones; and
10. the assumption that, underlying the various scientific disciplines,
there is basically one science about one real world.12

Some of those are straightforward, but I will elaborate a little. The first two are
aspirations for theory formation and are hardly controversial, unless, as Gerhard
Lenski has done, one insists that our statements should take the form of
mathematical axioms or, as Stanislav Andreski believes, statistics are
misleading.13 We should try to frame our tentative explanations of social
behaviour or social structure in ways that allow them to be tested. We cannot
get far if our ideas are like the proposition advanced by one of my students that
‘secularization is all about modernity’. ‘All about’ might be specific enough for
Pixie Lott’s toe-tapping pop hit It’s All About Tonight, but we need to be clear
what causes what and each ‘what’ needs to be specified as narrowly as possible,
as do the strength and direction of the causal relationships. Nor is it helpful, as
many people in the arts do, to misuse the word ‘truth’—as in composer John
Taverner’s ‘Stockhausen was a seeker after truth’—to mean conviction or
enthusiasm.14

I could improve my student’s proposition by saying that individualism + religious

diversity + an egalitarian ethos + political stability + state neutrality + the
confidence in human faculties given by science and technology undermine
traditional shared religious belief systems. This is clearer, but it would be better
still if we could define each of those terms so as to identify the things in question
unambiguously and specify how much of each has the desired effect. We know
that states that are basically democratic (hence the egalitarian ethos in the
equation) find it hard to impose conformity to a single national church if there is
(p.10) considerable religious diversity, and they generally give up the struggle.
But just how much religious diversity is needed to have this effect? And are
there different types of religious diversity? For example, differences of religious
affiliation within the upper classes might be more consequential than differences
between classes. Similarly, diversity within a long-established religion may be
more consequential than the arrival of an immigrant alternative: so long as the
‘natives’ share a common religion, that some migrant groups worship other gods
might be of little consequence.

But, even if we can be clearer about diversity, we need to do a lot more. I have
listed six contributory factors—which is already an artificial simplification of my
explanation of secularization—but not specified how they interact. Does any
combination have the effect of undermining religion or, just as spray-painting a
lump of iron ore is less useful than spraying steel after it has been shaped into
car body parts, does the order in which the various factors come into play
matter? Are all six causes necessary or can a large dose of one substitute for the
absence of another? For example, the Lutheran states of Northern Europe had

Page 5 of 29
The Value of Social Science

very little religious diversity before their state churches started to haemorrhage
adherents, but they did have a lot of ‘individualism’ (one meaning of which in
this context is a commitment to individual liberty). So can extra weight on one
factor compensate for the absence of another?

Already it is clear how difficult it is to translate the concerns of the student of

religious change into the theory style of the natural sciences, and, for reasons I
will discuss later in this chapter, it seems certain that the social sciences will
never come close to the precision of physics. Our wooliness is not a function of
being a relatively new discipline; sociology will not, as Lenski hoped, grow up to
become physics. Nonetheless, we must aim for clarity if we wish to explain
anything.

The third and fourth propositions are vital. There is little point in generating
competing explanations of social behaviour unless these can be tested in a
manner that eliminates the worst and improves the best. For most social
researchers testing means holding against the testimony of the real world. That
is, we suppose that, with skill and ingenuity, we can discover facts about the
object of our enquiry that allow us to develop and hone explanations. There are
alternatives. Faced with a contentious assertion about, for example, the effects
of contraception on teenage sexual behavior, we could ‘take it to the Lord in
prayer’ or seek guidance in Holy Scripture. We could (p.11) smoke hashish and
test theories against subsequent drug-fuelled revelations (if we could remember
them). We could argue that whether a theory is true or false is to be known, not
by how well it fits existing evidence, but by how well it encourages particular
responses. For example, some Marxists argue that what distinguishes knowledge
from false consciousness is not its fit with current evidence but its revolutionary
potential.15 Some feminists argue that their research methods are justified by
the ‘transformative’ potential of the knowledge so generated.16

The problems with such views are many, and it is enough to mention just two.
First, it is difficult to agree on moral judgements. Testing through praxis
requires that we agree on what would count as an improving transformation,
and often we do not. Ann Oakley might find widespread agreement that the
point of studying women giving birth is to reduce patriarchal oppression, but we
are unlikely to agree that the way to test competing theories about the
structures of terrorist organizations is to help them improve their killing
operations. Second, we cannot now know which is the best theory if the
transformative justification requires that we wait around to see what happens
when those people who read our papers and books react to them. Fortunately,
most researchers would agree that testing propositions means seeking evidence
that either supports or refutes them from the here-and-now.

Page 6 of 29
The Value of Social Science

Our ability to make accurate observations of the world that can provide theory-
testing evidence is doubted by philosophers who present reasonable arguments
against the assumption that observation is, in principle at least, unproblematic.
However, as such arguments have been pursued for centuries without
resolution, I suggest we instead consider how well people manage observation
and evidence-gathering in their day-to-day lives. My case is the pragmatic one
that, between the perfectionist extremes of competing epistemological positions,
there is sufficient common ground for us to go about our business. Consider the
example of the 1851 Census of Religious Worship—the only attempt by a British
government to measure in detail the religious affiliations of its people. This was
a massive bureaucratic undertaking that used the population census structure of
a hierarchy of officials responsible for distributing, collecting, checking, and
returning the forms to administer a questionnaire to all known worship outlets.
A church or chapel official was asked about the age and size of the church or
chapel and about the (p.12) number of people attending services on Sunday, 30
March. Although the lowest level of officials put considerable effort into chasing
up missing returns, a small number of generally very small outlets did not
report. We can also have reasonable doubts about the accuracy of the returns in
which all the figures are multiples of ten. More debilitating, the forms asked
about attendances, not attenders, and, as many churchgoers then attended
twice, we have to reduce the totals appropriately to get an estimate of the
percentage of the population that attended church or stick to presenting a likely
maximum figure (if no one attended more than once) and a likely minimum (if
everyone who attended at all attended twice). But we should all agree that the
census reports are still better evidence than the estimates of Mrs Effie
McClumpher of Gargunnock.

More than that, we can, with ingenuity and effort, improve the census estimates
considerably. Alasdair Crockett applied the sorts of mathematical and logical
skills common in codebreaking to improve the conclusions by calculating
possible ranges of variation.17 For example, many returns give totals in neat
multiples of ten, which suggests that the reporters guessed rather than counted.
Instead of concluding we should ditch the census, we can first of all estimate, by
examining a sample of the original returns, what proportion suffer this defect.
Then we can estimate what difference such sloppy reporting makes to overall
accuracy by assuming first that all the 20s might be 15 and second that they
might all be 24, all the 30s might be 25 or 34, and so on. We cannot produce
exact figures, but we can calculate plausible ranges and, for many of our
concerns (such as ‘is churchgoing more or less popular in 1951 than in 1851?’),
figures that can be represented as ‘plus or minus 6 per cent’ will be perfectly
adequate. We regularly demonstrate that we do not need to solve all the
problems of epistemology by giving practical demonstrations of such principles
as the more information, the better and the more informed a source, the more

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The Value of Social Science

reliable. That is, we have less difficulty knowing what would count as evidence
in practice than in theory.

Whether knowledge advances by the accumulation of supporting examples or by

the absence of negative examples—that is, by what Karl Popper called
verification or falsification—is another of those unresolved philosophy of science
arguments that for most purposes we can sidestep.18 Whether the advance of
science depends on verification or falsification and whether either is ‘really’
possible did not stop the early anatomists improving our understanding of the
(p.13) circulation of blood, and it need not stop us knowing, for example, what
would count as a good test of the proposition that the danger inherent in their
work made miners and fisherman particularly prone to evangelical religion (the
example is pursued in Chapter 10). We might haggle over every step in the
process, but we can see the basic contours: find communities of miners and
fisherman and compare their church- or chapel-going with that of communities
of manual workers whose jobs are considerable safer. We could become more
sophisticated. We could compare the religious activity of lead miners (whose
work was arduous but no more dangerous than most manual labour) and colliers
(whose work, because it involved poisonous and flammable gases, was
unpredictably dangerous). We could compare the religious commitments of
inshore and deep-sea fishermen. We could compare the churchgoing of
communities based on both industries over time as they became safer. And so
on. Provided we agree that there is a single real world out there, we should be
able to test propositions about it.

The fifth proposition is important because, if knowledge acquired through

research cannot be cumulative, research is pointless. None of us can study
everything. We each build on what others have done. I can try to explain why the
people of the Hebridean island of Lewis remained religious longer than the
people of the apparently similar Orkney and Shetland islands only because I can
read the research of people who have studied in detail elements of the economic,
political, social, and cultural lives of those islands over a time period longer than
my lifetime. In turn I hope that the conclusions I come to about those three
islands will be refined and tested by others studying settings that are similar in
some respects and different in others.

The sixth and seventh points are an extension of the fifth. Natural scientists
suppose that propositions about the relationship between temperature and
pressure hold true for the behaviour of gases in whatever country one performs
the experiment; social scientists rather more humbly can hope that the
propositions they develop are not too narrowly culturally confined.

Here we need to avoid a common misunderstanding. I do not mean that social

science ignores cultural differences: that would be absurd, when such cultural
differences are often the very things we study and comparison is key to that

Page 8 of 29
The Value of Social Science

study. As Durkheim put it: ‘comparative sociology is not a branch of sociology; it

is sociology itself insofar as it ceases to be purely descriptive and aspires to (p.
14) account for facts’.19 What I mean is that we aim to identify a common set of
concerns and conceptual devices for the study of more than just the one piece of
culture or society that interests us now. For example, the comparative study of
kinship rests on definitions that find their appropriate expression in a large
number of times and places; in order to say anything worthwhile about the
differences in the roles adopted by ‘fathers’ in Lutheran Norway in 1900 and
Catholic Colombia in 1980 we need to have some transcultural concept of father
that underlies all the different versions we see. And, if we can develop some
proposition that sufficiently survives testing in a variety of cultures, then we
suppose we have found out something of general applicability. If my colliers and
fishermen example works for modern Britain (and I know it works for the Pacific
islanders studied by Bronislaw Malinowski because I borrowed the example from
him), does it work for those occupations in a wide variety of religiously very
different societies? We could add Chinese and Ukrainian coal miners to our
study. The intercultural application of our theories is not the universality of
Boyle’s gas laws and Newton’s laws of motion. It is the lesser but nonetheless
necessary ambition of identifying regularities in human behaviour in terms that
are not themselves confined to the culture of the observer.

The principal objection to these points is relativism. It can be argued on a wide

variety of grounds that objectivity is never possible, that every explanation is
simply another narrative, that all narratives are social constructions that reflect
the interests and preconceptions of those who devise them, and hence that
knowledge is always only knowledge from a particular time, place, and social
position. A small number of thinkers argue that even the natural sciences are
social constructions in this sense.20 Paul Feyerabend’s Against Method is a
classic statement of the extreme anti-science position: he called himself an
‘epistemological anarchist’.21 It is more common to exempt the natural sciences
but condemn the social sciences to imprisonment within the ideological blinkers
of its proponents. Some scholars condemn most research to the relativist prison
but allow themselves a revelatory get-out clause. So some feminists dismiss most
social science as a patriarchal social construction but claim that their
emancipation allows them to discover the truth. Marxists allow an escape from
false consciousness to true knowledge through their alignment with the interests
of the working class (or, more usually, with what middle-class intellectuals tell
the proletariat are their interests). (p.15) Again, whether we can produce
knowledge rather than just another ‘account’ or ‘voice’ is one of those enduring
philosophical arguments, and again my solution is the same. While there are
serious practical difficulties in producing knowledge that is accepted as such
beyond any one particular time and place, this need not prevent us trying, and
we can find a number of justifications for so doing (which I will consider in

Page 9 of 29
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The fruit is a schizocarp, dividing into two mericarps; the plane in
which these separate coincides with that of the union of the carpels,
and the two nut-like mericarps are in most genera kept together for
awhile at the top of a thin, bifid, or undivided stalk (carpophore)
which is in direct continuation with the flower-stalk (Fig. 537). Each
mericarp has most frequently 5 more or less strongly projecting
ridges, the primary ridges (Figs. 530, 532, 534, 535, etc.), of which 3
lie on the back of the mericarp, the dorsal ridges, and 2 on its edge
near the plane of division, the marginal ridges; five of these (10
ridges in all in the entire fruit) are placed opposite the calyx-teeth
and the others between them. In some genera there are in addition 4
secondary ridges to each mericarp between the primary ones (Fig.
528 E: the secondary ridges bear the long bristles). Inside these
secondary ridges, or inside the grooves between the primary ridges,
when the secondary ridges are absent, oil ducts (vittæ,
schizogenous ducts) are found in the pericarp, most frequently one
in each groove; two are also often found on the ventral side of each
mericarp (Figs. 528 E, 530 ol, etc.). The seed is most frequently
united with the pericarp. The embryo is small and lies high up in the
large, most frequently horny endosperm (Fig. 528 D).—The
endosperm does not contain starch, but oil, and presents three
different forms, of important systematic value: (a) those which are
quite flat on the ventral side (i.e. the side turned towards the plane of
splitting) (Figs. 528 E, 530, 531, 534, etc.): the majority of the
genera, Orthospermeæ (e.g. Carum, Pastinaca); (b) those in which
the endosperm on the ventral side is provided with a longitudinal
groove, often deep: Campylospermeæ (e.g. Anthriscus); the
transverse section is nearly a crescent (Fig. 532); (c) those in which
the endosperm is concave on the ventral side (hollow in both
longitudinal and transverse sections): Cœlospermeæ (e.g.
Coriandrum) (Fig. 538).
The genera are distinguished first of all by the endosperm and forms of fruit, the
ridges and oil-ducts; then by the form of the umbel, the calyx and corolla, by the
absence or presence of an involucre, etc.
 Fig. 529.—
Hydrocotyle
vulgaris. Transverse
section of fruit.
1. Hydrocotyleæ, Penny-wort Group. Capitula or simple
umbels (all the other groups have compound umbels). No oil-ducts.
Orthospermous.—Hydrocotyle (Penny-wort). The fruit is
considerably compressed laterally (Fig. 529). The calyx-teeth are
small. The leaves are peltate.—Didiscus.—Sanicula (Sannicle). The
umbels are small, capitate, generally collected in a raceme; calyx-
teeth distinct. ♂ -and ♀ -flowers in the same umbel. The fruits are
round, studded with hooked bristles. No carpophore.—Astrantia has
an umbel surrounded by a large, often coloured involucre, with this
exception it is the same as the preceding, but the fruit is slightly
compressed, with 5 equal ridges. Hacquetia (Dondia).—Eryngium
(Sea Holly): leaves often thorny. The flowers are all sessile, the
inflorescence is thus a capitulum; each flower is often subtended by
a bract, which is thorny like the involucre, resembling the burrs of the
Teasel. The sepals are large.—Lagœcia: one of the loculi of the ovary is
suppressed.
Fig. 530.—Fruit of Carum petroselinum: fr endosperm; ol oil-ducts.

Fig. 531.—Pimpinella. Transverse

section of fruit.
 2. Ammieæ, Caraway Group (Figs. 530–532). The fruit has only
the 10 primary ridges; it is usually short, almost spherical or broadly
ovate and distinctly compressed laterally. Oil-canals are most
frequently present. Orthospermous (except Conium).—Cicuta (Cow-
bane). Pointed calyx-teeth. Glabrous herbs with pinnate or bipinnate
leaves. C. virosa has a thick, vertical rhizome, divided by transverse septa into
many compartments; the leaflets are narrow, lanceolate, and dentate; the large
involucre is wanting.—Apium (Celery). No calyx-teeth. A. graveolens, a
maritime plant, has neither large nor small involucre; the umbels are
short-stalked or sessile.—Carum (Caraway). Calyx-teeth small; the
large involucre is wanting or is only few-leaved. C. carvi (Caraway).
C. petroselinum, (Parsley) (Fig. 530). Falcaria; Ammi; Helosciadium;
Bupleurum (Hare’s-ear) with simple leaves and yellow corolla;
Pimpinella (Fig. 531); Sium; Ægopodium (A. podagraria, Gout-weed)
has bi- or tri-ternate leaves, with ovate, dentate leaflets; the large
involucre is wanting.—Conium is campylospermous (Fig. 532); the
short, broadly ovate fruit has distinctly projecting, often wavy
crenulate ridges. C. maculatum (Hemlock) has a round, smooth stem
with purplish spots.
 Fig. 532.—Conium maculatum. Fruit entire and in transverse
section.
3. Scandiceæ. This group has a distinctly oblong or linear fruit
which is slightly compressed laterally, and generally prolonged
upwards into a “beak”; wings absent. Campylospermous. Otherwise
as in the Ammieæ.—Anthriscus (Beaked Parsley) has a lanceolate
fruit, round on the dorsal side, without ridges, but with a ten-ridged
beak.—Scandix (Shepherd’s-needle).—Chærophyllum (Chervil): fruit
lanceolate or linear with low, blunt ridges; beak absent or very short.
C. temulum has a red-spotted, hairy stem.—Myrrhis (Cicely) has a
short beak and sharp, almost winged ridges. M. odorata (Sweet
Cicely) has very long fruits.
 Fig. 533.—Œnanthe phellandrium. Fruit entire
and in transverse section. emb The embryo; ol
the oil-ducts; fr endosperm.
 Fig. 534.—Fœniculum vulgare. Fruit
in transverse section.
4. Seselineæ, Fennel Group (Figs. 533, 534). The fruit is
slightly elliptical or oblong, in transverse section circular or nearly so,
without grooves in the dividing plane; only primary ridges are
present. Orthospermous.—Fœniculum (Fennel) has yellow petals;
both involucres are wanting; the fruit is oblong. The ridges are thick,
all equally developed, or the lateral ridges are slightly larger (Fig.
534).—Æthusa (A. cynapium, Fool’s Parsley); the large involucre is
wanting or is reduced to one leaf, the small involucre is composed of
three linear leaves which hang downwards on the outer side of the
umbels. The fruit is spherical-ovate, with thick, sharp, keeled ridges,
the lateral ones of which are the broadest.—Œnanthe (Dropwort);
the fruit (Fig. 533) has usually an ovate, lanceolate form, with
distinct, pointed sepals and long, erect styles; the ridges are very
blunt, the marginal ones a trifle broader than the others.—Seseli,
Libanotis, Cnidium, Silex, Silaus, Meum, etc.
5. Peucedaneæ, Parsnip Group (Figs. 535–537). The fruit is
most frequently very strongly compressed dorsally, with broad,
mostly winged, lateral ridges. Only primary ridges. The dorsal ridges
may project considerably, but are not winged. Orthospermous.
 Fig. 535.—Archangelica officinalis. Transverse section of fruit.

Fig. 536.—Scorodosma fœtidum. Transverse section of fruit.

a. The winged lateral ridges stand out from each other, so that the
fruit appears to be 4-winged (Fig. 535).—Angelica; Archangelica
(Fig. 535); Levisticum (Lovage).
 Fig. 537.—Heracleum sphondylium. Fruit.
b. The winged lateral ridges lie close together, and form one wing
on each side of the fruit (Fig. 536).—Pastinaca (Parsnip). Corolla
yellow. The dorsal ridges are very weak; the oil-ducts do not reach
quite as far as the base of the fruit. Both large and small involucres
are wanting; leaflets ovate. Anethum (Dill) is a Parsnip with more
distinct dorsal ridges and filamentous leaflets. Peucedanum (Hog’s-
fennel); Ferula (with Scorodosma, Fig. 536, and Narthex); Dorema.
—Heracleum (Cow-parsnip); the flowers in the margin of the umbels
are often very large, zygomorphic, and project like rays, e.g. in H.
sibiricum. The fruit is very flat, with very small dorsal ridges; the oil-
ducts are more or less club-like and do not reach as far as the base
of the fruit (Fig. 537). Imperatoria; Tordylium.
6. Dauceæ, Carrot Group (Fig. 528). The fruit has 18 ridges,
i.e. each fruitlet has 5 primary and 4 secondary ridges, the latter
being often more prominent and projecting further than the primary
ones. The oil-ducts are situated under the secondary ridges (Fig.
528).
a. Orthospermous: Daucus (Carrot). The secondary ridges
project much further than the primary, and bear on their crests a
series of hooked spines (Fig. 528 D, E); these are much longer than
the small bristles on the primary ridges. The involucral leaves of D. carota
(Carrot) are numerous and deeply pinnate; the inflorescence contracts during the
ripening of the fruit, and since the external umbels have longer stalks than the
central ones, they arch over them, and the inflorescence becomes hollow. For the
terminal flower, see below.—Cuminum; Laserpitium; Melanoselinum.
b. Campylospermous: Torilis (Hedge Parsley). The primary
ridges are covered with bristles; the secondary ridges are not. very
distinct on account of the spines, which entirely fill up the grooves.
Caucalis (Bur Parsley).

Fig. 538.—Coriandrum sativum: b secondary ridges; d primary ridges; f

endosperm; l embryo.
c. Cœlospermous: Coriandrum (Coriander) has a smooth,
spherical fruit (Fig. 538) with a distinct, 5-dentate calyx, the two
anterior (i.e. turned outward) teeth being generally longer than the
others; the two fruitlets scarcely separate from each other naturally;
all the ridges project only very slightly, the curved primary ones least,
the secondary ridges most.
Pollination. The flowers are adapted for insect-pollination; they secrete nectar
at the base of the styles; individually they are rather small and insignificant, but yet
are rendered conspicuous by being always crowded in many-flowered
inflorescences. Protandry is common, sometimes to such an extent that the
stamens have already fallen off before the styles begin to develop (Fig 539, 2).
Insect visits are more frequent and numerous as the inflorescences are more
conspicuous. The flowers as a rule are ☿, but ♂ -flowers are often found
interspersed among the others (Fig. 539), and the number of these becomes
greater on the umbels developed at the latest period. A terminal flower, which
differs from the others in form, and in Daucus carota often in colour also (purple),
is sometimes found in the umbel. The nectar lies so exposed and flat that the
flowers are principally visited by insects with short probosces, especially Diptera;
bees are less frequent visitors, and butterflies rare.—1400 species (175 genera);
especially from temperate climates in Europe, Asia, N. Am. About 68 species in
this country.

Fig. 539.—Anthriscus silvester: 1 ♂-flower; 2 ☿-flower.

Uses. A few are cultivated as ornamental plants. They are, however, useful in
medicine,[38] and for culinary purposes on account of the essential oils and gum-
resins which in many are formed in root, stem, and fruit. The fruits of the
following are used: Carum carvi [+] (Caraway), Carum petroselinum (Parsley; also
the leaves and root; its home is the Eastern Mediterranean); Fœniculum
capillaceum [+] (Fennel; S. Europe); Pimpinella anisum [+] (Anise; E.
Mediterranean); Coriandrum sativum [+] (Coriander; S. Eur.); Œnanthe
phellandrium (Water Dropwort); Cuminum cyminum (Point Caraway; Africa;
cultivated in S. Europe); Anethum graveolens (Dill). The leaves of the following
are used as pot-herbs: Anthriscus cerefolium (Chervil); Myrrhis odorata (Sweet
Cicely; Orient.); Conium maculatum [+] (the green portions; Hemlock). Besides
Parsley, the roots of the following are used: Carrot, Parsnip, Sium sisarum
(Sugar-root; E. Asia); Chærophyllum bulbosum (Chervil-root); Levisticum officinale
(foliage-shoots; S. Europe); Imperatoria ostruthium; Apium graveolens (Celery, the
root in conjunction with the internodes); Pimpinella saxifraga and magna
(Pimpinell); Archangelica (Angelica, the root of A. norvegica was formerly an
article of food in Norway). Poisonous alkaloids are found in a few, such as Fool’s
Parsley (Æthusa cynapium), Hemlock (Conium maculatum), Cow-bane (Cicuta
virosa) and species of Œnanthe.—Gum-resin is extracted from various species:
“Galbanum” from Ferula galbaniflua [+] and rubricalis [+] (Persia); Asafœtida from
Ferula scorodosma [+] and F. narthex [+]; Ammoniac-gum from Dorema
ammoniacum [+], all from Central and S. W. Asia. “Silphium” was an Umbelliferous
plant which grew in ancient times in Cyrene, and from which the Romans extracted
a valued condiment.
Family 25. Hysterophyta.
This family (with the exception of Aristolochiaceæ) includes only
parasitic plants. Partly on this ground, and partly because they all
have epigynous flowers, they are considered to belong to the
youngest type (which is expressed in the name ὕστερος, the one that
comes after). It is not certain to which of the preceding families they
are most nearly allied. Again, it is a matter of doubt whether the
Aristolochiaceæ are related to the others; they are by Engler united with
Rafflesiaceæ into one family, Aristolochiales.
 Fig. 540.—Flower of
Aristolochia clematitis
(long. sect.). A Before
pollination, and B after: n
stigma; a anthers; t an
insect; kf ovary.
Order 1. Aristolochiaceæ. The majority are perennial herbs or
twining shrubs, whose stalked, simple, and generally more or less
cordate or reniform leaves are borne in 2 rows and are exstipulate.
The flowers are hermaphrodite, epigynous, regular or zygomorphic;
perianth-leaves united, simple but most frequently petaloid and 3-
merous; 6 or 12 (in Thottea as many as 36) stamens with extrorse
anthers. The ovary is more or less completely 4–6-locular with
ovules attached in the inner angles of the loculi (Fig. 540 kf). The
style is short, and has a large, radiating stigma (Fig. 540 n). Fruit a
capsule. Seeds rich in endosperm.
 Asarum europæum. Each shoot has 2 reniform foliage-leaves,
between which the terminal flower is borne (the rhizome becomes a
sympodium by development of the bud in the axil of the upper
foliage-leaf). The flower is regular and has a bell-shaped perianth
with 3 outer valvate, and 3 inner small segments (which may be
wanting). 12 (2 × 6) free, extrorse stamens, 6 carpels.—Aristolochia
clematitis (Birth-wort) has an erect, unbranched stem, bearing many
flowers in the leaf-axils, in a zig-zag row (accessory buds in a
unipared scorpioid cyme). The flowers are zygomorphic (Fig. 540),
formed by 3 alternating, 6-merous whorls. The perianth has a lower,
much-distended part (k), succeeded by a narrow, bent tube (r), which
passes over into an oblique, almost tongue-like projection (6
vascular bundles indicate that the number 6 is prevalent here, as in
Asarum); 6 stamens (Fig. 540 a), with the dorsal portion turned
upwards, are united with the short style to form a stylar column; they
are placed quite beneath the 6 commissural stigmatic rays, which
arch over them as short, thick lobes. Protogynous; Pollination is effected
in Arist. clematitis by small flies; these enter the erect unfertilised flower through
the tube (Fig. 540 A, l) without being prevented by the stiff, downwardly-turned
hairs which line the tube and prevent their escape; they find the stigma (n) fully
developed, and may pollinate it with the pollen they have brought with them. The
stigmas then straighten and wither (B, n), the anthers open, and the flies may
again be covered with pollen; but the hairs which blocked up the tube do not wither
until the anthers have shed their pollen, and only then allow the imprisoned flies to
escape and effect cross-pollination. Prior to pollination, the flowers stand erect, but
after this has taken place they become pendulous, and the perianth soon withers.
—A. sipho (Pipe-flower), another species, is a climber, and often grown in
gardens; it has only one row of accessory buds in the leaf-axils.—200 species;
chiefly in S. Am. Officinal: the rhizome of Aristolochia serpentaria (N. Am.).
 Fig. 541.—A fruit of Myzodendron brachystachyum (slightly
mag.) germinating on a branch.
Order 2. Santalaceæ. Parasites containing chlorophyll, which, by the help of
peculiar organs of suction (haustoria) on their roots, live principally on the roots of
other plants. Some are herbs, others under-shrubs. The regular, most frequently ☿-
flowers have a simple perianth, which is gamophyllous, 3- or 5 partite with the
segments valvate in the bud, and a corresponding number of stamens opposite
the perianth-leaves. In the inferior ovary there is a free, centrally placed, often long
and curved placenta with three ovules (one opposite each carpel); these are
naked, or in any case have an extremely insignificant integument. Fruit a nut or
drupe. Seed without testa. Endosperm fleshy. 225 species; chiefly in the Tropics.—
Thesium, a native, is a herb with scattered, linear leaves and small 5-merous
flowers (P5, A5, G3) in erect racemes; the subtending bracts are displaced on the
flower-stalks. Fruit a nut.—Osyris (diœcious shrub; 3-merous flowers) is another
European genus.—Santalum album, which grows in E. Ind., yields the valuable,
scented Sandalwood, the oil of which is used medicinally.—Quinchamalium.
 Myzodendron is a reduced form of the Santalaceæ; the ♂ -flowers are without
perianth; the perianth of the ♀ -flower is 3-merous. About 7 species; S. Am.;
parasitic on a Beech (Nothofagus). The fruit has 3 feathery brushes, alternating
with the lobes of the stigma, which serve as flying organs and to attach the fruits to
a branch (Fig. 541), the brushes twining round as soon as they come in contact
with it. There is only 1 seed in the fruit, which germinates by a long, negatively
heliotropic hypocotyl, and is attached by a radicle modified into an haustorium.
Order 3. Loranthaceæ (Mistletoes). Plants containing chlorophyll
which are parasites on trees, and most frequently have opposite,
simple, entire leaves and regular, epigynous, often unisexual, 2- or
3-merous flowers, with single or double perianth. Stamens equal in
number and opposite to the perianth-leaves, free, or in varying
degrees united to one another. The inferior ovary is constructed as in
the Santalaceæ, the ovules being situated on a low, free, centrally-
placed placenta, but the placenta and ovules unite with the wall of
the ovary into one connected, parenchymatous mass, in which the
embryo-sacs are imbedded. Only 1 (less frequently 2–3) of the 1–6
embryo-sacs is fertile. The number of the carpels however varies.
The fruit is a 1-seeded berry, whose inner layer is changed into a
tough slimy mass (bird-lime), which serves to attach the fruits to
other plants.
The two groups, Loranthoideæ and Viscoideæ, are distinguished by the fact that
the former has a distinct “calyculus,” i.e. an entire or lobed, or dentate swelling on
the receptacle below the perianth. The majority of the Loranthoideæ have a
petaloid perianth; in all the Viscoideæ, on the other hand, it is sepaloid.
 Fig. 542.—Viscum album: A
branch with leaves and berries: a
scale-leaves; b foliage-leaves; n m n
flowers; B seedling, the bark of the
branch being removed; C an older
embryo which still retains the
cotyledons.
 Fig. 543.—To the left the Rafflesiaceous
Cytinus hypocistus, parasitic on the roots of
Cistus. To the right the Balanophoraceous
Cynomorium coccineum, parasitic on the roots
of Salicornia.
The Mistletoe (Viscum album, Fig. 542) is a native, evergreen
plant which may be found growing on almost any of our trees
(sometimes on the Oak), and, like other Loranthaceæ, it produces
swellings of the affected branches. Its spherical white berries (Fig. 542 A)
enclose (1–) 2–3 green embryos; they are eaten by birds (especially Thrushes),
and are partly sown with their excrement, partly struck or brushed off the branches
of the trees, the seed being enclosed, at maturity, by viscin, i.e. “bird-lime.” The
seeds may also germinate on the branches, without having first passed through
the alimentary canal of the birds. On germination, the hypocotyl-axis first appears,
as in Fig. 541, and bends towards the branch; the apex of the root then broadens,
and forms at the end a disc-like haustorium, from the centre of which a root-like
body grows through the bark into the wood, and ramifies between the bark and
wood. Suckers are developed on the root like strands which are formed in this
manner, without, however, having a rootcap; they are green, and penetrate the
wood by the medullary rays (Fig. 542 C). Adventitious buds may also be
developed from the root-like strands which break through the bark and emerge as
young plants. The young stem quickly ceases its longitudinal growth, and lateral
shoots are developed from the axils of its foliage-leaves. These and all following
shoots have a similar structure; each of them bears a pair of scale-leaves (Fig. 542
A, a) and a pair of foliage-leaves (Fig. 542 A, b), and then terminates its growth, if
it does not produce an inflorescence; new lateral shoots proceed from the axils of
the foliage-leaves, and the branching, in consequence, is extremely regular and
falsely dichotomous. Only one internode (shoot-generation) is formed each year,
so that each fork indicates one year. The foliage-leaves fall off in the second year.
The inflorescence is a 3(-5)-flowered dichasium (Fig. 542 A, m is the central
flower, n the lateral). The plants are diœcious; the ♂-flower as a rule is 2-merous:
perianth 2 + 2, each leaf of which bears on its inner side 6–20 pollen-sacs, each of
which opens by a pore; this relationship may be considered to have arisen from
the union of the perianth-leaves with the multilocular stamens (2 + 2) placed
opposite them. The ♀-flowers always have Pr 2 + 2, G2.—Loranthus is also found
in Europe (it has a 3-merous flower), especially in the central and south-eastern
districts, on Quercus cerris and Q. pubescens; but the great majority of the 520
species grow in the Tropics on trees which they ornament with their often brightly-
coloured flowers, and ultimately kill when present in too great numbers. The
pollination in the numerous Loranthaceæ with unisexual flowers, is effected by the
wind. In Viscum album this takes place in autumn, the actual fertilisation in the
following spring, and the maturity in November or December; in the succeeding
month of May the berry is ready to germinate, and falls off.
 Uses. Birdlime from Viscum album.
Order 4. Rafflesiaceæ and Order 5. Balanophoraceæ. These orders comprise
root-parasites, almost entirely devoid of chlorophyll; they are reddish or yellow,
without foliage-leaves (Fig. 543). As far as our knowledge of these rare tropical
plants extends, they have thalloid organs of vegetation resembling the root-like
strands of Viscum, or they are filamentous and branched like Fungus-hyphæ; they
live in and on the tissues of the host-plant, from which their flowering-shoots, often
of mushroom-like form, are subsequently developed (Fig. 543). In order to unfold
they must often break through the tissues of the host-plant.
Of the Rafflesiaceæ, Cytinus hypocistus is found in S. Europe living on roots
of Cistus-plants and to some extent resembling Monotropa (Fig. 543). Rafflesia is
the best known; it lives on roots of Cissus-species (belonging to the Ampelidaceæ)
in Java; its yellowish-red, stinking flowers attain a gigantic size (one metre or more
in diameter), and are borne almost directly on the roots of the host-plant. Besides
these there are other genera: Brugmansia, Pilostyles, Hydnora.—To
Balanophoraceæ (Fig. 543) belong: Balanophora, Langsdorffia, Scybalium,
Sarcophyte, Helosis, etc., and in S. Europe, Cynomorium coccineum.

Sub-Class 2. Sympetalæ.
The characters which separate this from the first Sub-class, the
Choripetalæ, have been described on page 336. They consist in the
following: the flower is always verticillate, generally with 5 sepals, 5
petals, 5 stamens, and 2 carpels (in the median plane), the calyx is
generally persistent and gamosepalous, the corolla is gamopetalous
and united to the stamens, which are therefore adnate to it, the
ovules have only one thick integument and a small nucellus. (The
exceptions are noted later.)
This Sub-class is no doubt more recent than the Choripetalæ; it is also peculiar
in including fewer trees and shrubby forms than the latter.
The Sympetalæ may be separated into 2 sections:—
A. Pentacyclicæ (five-whorled). The flowers in this section
have 5 whorls equal in number, namely, 2 staminal whorls in addition
to the calyx, corolla, and carpels; in some instances, one of the
staminal whorls is rudimentary or entirely suppressed, but in this
case it is frequently the sepal-stamens which are suppressed, and
the whorl which is present stands opposite the petals. The flowers
are regular. The number of carpels equals that of the sepals, but in