Conclusion

Abstract

On the 17 December 1907 L. T. Hobhouse appeared before an audience including Sir Arthur Rücker and Sir William Collins, the principal and vice-chancellor of the University of London, at the London School of Economics to deliver his inaugural address as Martin White professor of sociology. As an event that marked both the end of one chapter in the history of British sociology and the beginning of another, Hobhouse’s address, which was entitled ‘The Roots of Modern Sociology’, had one major aim: to get a ‘clear conception of what [sociology] is, and what lies before us in the study of it by tracing its roots in the history of thought’.¹ However, despite striking a conciliatory tone that was worthy of someone who was supposed to unify British sociology, Hobhouse also wanted to declare an end to the debates about the place of biology in social science, which had threatened to consume the Sociological Society during the previous four years. In so doing, he not only gave a succinct summary of this book’s arguments about the origins and content of the founding British debates about sociology but also highlighted why he, rather than Patrick Geddes or a disciple of Francis Galton, had secured the UK’s first chair of sociology.