Florian Witold Znaniecki
January 15, 1882 – March 23, 1958
Florian Znaniecki served as the 44th President of the American Sociological Association. His Presidential Address, “Basic Problems of Contemporary Sociology,” was delivered on September 8, 1954 at the Association’s Annual Meeting in Urbana, Illinois, and was later published in the American Sociological Review (ASR October 1954 Vol 19 No 5, pp 519-524).
Obituary
In his life and work Florian Znaniecki exemplified magnificently the type of Creative Personality he so brilliantly described in The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (1918) and in The Social Role of the Man of Knowledge (1941). His mind was continually active on the frontiers of knowledge, probing and ordering, inventive and bold. For Znaniecki, writing was a passion. He wrote for publication because he had enthusiasm for his ideas and, confident of their validity, he wished to communicate them to others. He succeeded admirably in this. Excepting Herbert Spencer, there is hardly another sociologist who wrote with equal simplicity and clarity and who, in argument, was able to anticipate the reader’s most penetrating. questions. There can be disagreement with what Znaniecki said, but never any doubt as to his premises or what he meant to say.
His enthusiasm for communication also infected his teaching. He knew how to evoke understanding and appreciation of a subject, possessing a masterly touch which stimulated creative efforts in his students. In his relations with people he was always generous and completely free of guile. Although he was aware of his superior intellect and achievement, he never used their qualities for self-aggrandizement.
Florian Znaniecki began his career as a poet. After finishing gymnasium in Poland he went to Paris in pursuit of poetic inspiration. There he came under the influence of Henri Bergson’s “creative evolution,” which Znaniecki translated into Polish. The contact with Bergson influenced him to change his principal interest from poetry to philosophy. Studying at various universities in France and Switzerland, Znaniecki led a turbulently romantic life which included a period of service in the Foreign Legion, and finally obtained his doctorate at the University of Cracow with a thesis on The Problems of Value in Philosophy (1910).
In 1912 Znaniecki published a significant volume on Humanism and Knowledge, which led to his recognition as second only to Lukasiewicz among Polish philosophers. While waiting for a university post he worked for the Immigration Service in Warsaw. There he was “discovered” by W. I. Thomas who invited him to go to Chicago in 1914: thus was initiated one of the finest examples of teamwork in the history of the social sciences. These two were creative and imaginative men, and they complemented each other in temperament. Thomas taught Znaniecki the sociological viewpoint. He was rewarded by evoking from Znaniecki the interpretation of Polish culture and the broad theoretical framework which have made The Polish Peasant a sociological classic.
During his stay in Chicago Znaniecki published Cultural Reality (1919). This book contained the germ of the major ideas developed in his subsequent writings. In 1920 he accepted a Chair of Philosophy at the University of Poznan where he inaugurated courses in sociology and organized an institute for sociological research. He quickly attracted a number of promising young scholars and directed them along the path which he envisaged for sociology, including the use of the methods employed so successfully for The Polish Peasant. Under his leadership, and with the assistance of Josef Chalasinski and others, the Poznan Institute began the large scale project of collecting personal documents and biograms from members of all significant categories of the population. An enormous amount of material was collected resulting in several major studies. Unfortunately, the Nazis destroyed all of this during the invasion in 1939.
At Poznan Znaniecki continued his scholarly work, bringing out several volumes in Polish: The Downfall of Civilization (1922), Contemporary Man (1927), The Sociology of Education (1930), and others. In 1931, The Laws of Social Psychology, written in English, was published.
In 1932 Columbia University invited Znaniecki to conduct a study of the effect of social change on education. Largely as a result of his participation in the famous Sunday seminar, headed by Robert MacIver, Znaniecki produced the most mature formulation, until then, of his theoretical position in The Method of Sociology (1934). On his return to Poland, he initiated the ambitious program of systematizing socio- logical knowledge in terms of what he viewed as its four basic divisions: social action, social relations, social persons, and social groups. The first fruit of this effort was Social Action (1937).
As luck had it, Znaniecki was called to Columbia to teach during the summer of 1939. When war threatened he hastened his return to Poland. But the war caught up with him when he reached England and he returned to Columbia to deliver a series of lectures which were embodied in The Social Role of the Man of Knowledge (1941). In 1942 Znaniecki accepted a professorship at the University of Illinois where he carried on a very productive career of teaching and writing until his retirement.
Of his latest books, Modern Nationalities (1951) best illustrates the application of his sociological viewpoint to a specific problem, and Cultural Sciences (1952) is the most complete formulation of his views on the nature and tasks of the science of man. At the time of his death Znaniecki was completing the third volume of a series which he planned to issue under the tile Systematic Sociology.
Znaniecki’s election to the presidency of the American Sociological Society in 1953 reflected the international character of his contribution to sociology and the preeminence of his work. Second only to Simmel, Znaniecki pioneered the conception of sociology as a special science. He was also one of the first to stress the importance of research which takes full account of the special characteristics of humanistic data. His systematization of the field of sociology was a major contribution. In any future Hall of Fame for sociologists, Florian Znaniecki will occupy a prominent place.
