Origins
Humanistic sociology is a domain of sociology that grew from antipositivism. It originated from the initial work of Florian Witold Znaniecki and W. I. Thomas who co-authored The Polish Peasant in Europe and America. Thomas, due to his multi-ethnic background, was fluent in Polish. He developed the life-history methodology, where data is obtained from letters and other materials, such as the archives of the Polish Emigrants Protective Association, of which Znaniecki was a director. Znaniecki was a philosopher who opposed idealism and naturalism, proposing instead a methodology for social research based around the "humanistic coefficient", sometimes known as the humanist principle. The outbreak of World War I led Znaniecki to join Thomas at Chicago.
Unfortunately for Thomas, he encountered political problems, ending his career as an academic. However, he went on to produce important works at the New School for Social Research, working with other notable scholars, such as Harold Laski. As a result, his role in the origins of Humanistic sociology is often understated.
Znaniecki went on to a distinguished academic career, taking the chair of sociology at the University of Poznan where he founded the Polish Sociological Institute. Fortunately for Znaniecki, at the outbreak of World War II, he was a visiting professor at Columbia University. Thus, he was spared the tragic history of his motherland. He became a professor at the University of Illinois, where he stayed until his death in 1958. His mantle passed to his gifted student, Stanisław Ossowski, who revived the Polish Sociological Institute after it had been liquidated by Stalinist authorities in 1951 (as the Polish Sociological Association). Ossowski maintained the noted and considerable resistance by Znaniecki to the "ideological control of science".
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