Sociology

This chapter analyzes the significance of the present and constant concern for methodology in sociology and examines whether this continuing concern advances sociology as a scientific discipline. Perhaps it might be helpful, in organizing one&s;s thinking about this matter, to break up the historical period covering the rise and development of the sociological enterprise into three appropriate units. First, there was the period beginning about 1800 and encompassing almost the entire nineteenth century. Second, there was the period, beginning about 1890 and ending with the beginning of World War II, which might be described as one dominated by crude empiricism. The third period can be described as one that has been and is preoccupied with the methodological concern to an extreme degree. The chapter considers the issue that centers around man&s;s nature. The locus problem in social science is the attempt to specify the basic unit of observation and analysis that is to serve as a focus for inquiry

Epistemology · Natural (archaeology) · Natural science · Sociology · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · History · Philosophy

• Sociological Theory and Human Nature

  Nicholas G Petryszak•The Pacific Sociological Review•1980

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