On Sociological Method

Abstract

Sociology is a peculiar science. In many other disciplines, scholars are simply studying their subject-matter, leaving metascientific considerations to specialised methodologists or philosophers of science. But in sociology, most leading theorists, from Comte to Merton, with Durkheim, Weber, Znaniecki, Parsons and significant others on the way, are not only doing science but thinking about the ways of science. Their metasociological thinking takes two distinct forms. Some of it is critical, pointing out numerous weaknesses, fallacies and lacunae of the sociological enterprise. Some of it is constructive, outlining directives, proposals and suggestions for doing sociology better. These preoccupations are so pervasive that they breed their own critics. Such critics climb to a still higher level (one is tempted to say a meta-metasociological level) and generously assign blame; to the critics of sociology for their masochism; to the reformers of sociology for their utopianism and perfectionism. And strangely enough, from that elevated platform, most distant from facts, they sometimes advise everybody else to get down to earth and the facts.