The Relevance of ‘Pure’ Theory

Abstract

There are a number of social theorists in Britain whose writings characteristically cut across the boundaries of sociology, social philosophy, the philosophy of science and the methodology of the social sciences. As far as the practice of sociology is concerned their influence is diffuse and yet the issues they raise are I think of continuing importance. The authors I have particularly in mind are Karl Popper, Ernest Gellner, Alasdair Maclntyre, Peter Winch and Steven Lukes. My interest here is to suggest some of the ways in which their reflections on the nature of sociological knowledge have impinged on the practice of sociological work in Britain. Those who wish to explore in a wider context the ramifications of the debates to which such writers contribute may refer with profit to such texts as Alan Ryan’s The Philosophy of the Social Sciences (1970), Richard J. Bernstein’s The Restructuring of Social and Political Theory (1976) and Anthony Giddens, New Rules of Sociological Method (1976). A collection of helpful expository essays on a diversity of topics is Anthony Giddens’s Studies in Social and Political Theory (1977). Two of those essays, ‘Positivism and its Critics’, and ‘Hermeneutics, Ethnomethodology and Problems of Interpretative Analysis’, have relevance to some of the issues I shall discuss below. However, my aim is different, namely to locate some of these general debates within the context of the development of British sociology.