Towards a ’natural history’ of the sociology of art.

The story of art, viewed in its broad pattern, is largely the story of its growth from speculative beginnings, through a succession of critical conceptualizations, towards a more rationalistic frame of reference. No inevitable or evolutionary trend is implied in the sequence ‘speculative-scientific’ except to point out the thin thread apparent throughout the history of art investigations from initial ‘a priori’ generalizations and subjective recordings concerning the nature of esthetic experience to the more scientific approach of objective inquiry into the function of art in specific social situations. An attempt is made to classify material in the field around ‘classical-speculative’ conceptions of art activity, through ‘medieval-authorative’ to a pending ‘modern-scientific’ frame of reference, and to present in the light of insights gained the ‘natural history’ of a new field of inquiry...the sociology of art