Yet from the particular scientific viewpoint conceived by the notion of sociation, this psychological phenomenon as such may be entirely ignored, and attention may be focused rather upon tracing, analyzing, and connecting its contents. … Returning to an earlier illustration, we may (ignoring all differences) compare the procedure of sociology with the performance of a geometrical deduction using a figure drawn on a blackboard. All that is given and seen here is the physically produced chalk marks, but it is not in them that we are interested but in their significance from the viewpoint of geometry, which has nothing whatever to do with that physical figure as a deposit of chalk particles.

DEFINE: Cluster clarifies the sociological questions about superordination: how phases of dominance and submission unfold, and how much hierarchy is compatible with egalitarian co-ordination in other contexts. Builds on: "Sociology abstracts social forms like geometry abstracts physical forms."

Georg Simmel, on individuality and social…, loc. 208