  In “Sociology Hesitant” (ca. 1905), perhaps his most theoretically rich contribution to the philosophy of the human sciences, Du Bois takes issue with Comte’s and Spencer’s collectivist  holism[29]—the thesis that society is a concrete whole (for Du Bois, a “mystical whole”) formed of discrete units—and he again defends the view that society comprises the “deeds of men,” as well as the “law, rule, and rythm” [sic] governing those deeds (ca. 1905, 274). For Du Bois, sociology is the science of human action, not the science of society as such, or the science of society as a whole.