1. Simmel and the methodological problems of formal sociology.
- Author
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Parsons, Talcott
- Subjects
- *
SOCIOLOGY , *SOCIAL interaction , *SOCIAL sciences , *SOCIAL facts - Abstract
This article discusses the contributions of Georg Simmel to sociology and the methodological problems of sociology. Simmel as a general social theorist is primarily known as the author of a formula for defining the scope and the subject-matter of sociology, that sociology should be the study of social forms. It is common knowledge that in the earlier stages of self consciousness of sociology as a science, the tendency was strong to conceive it in synthetic or encyclopedic sense, as the systematic statement of all our established generalized knowledge of the concrete social life of man. Simmel was one of the first to revolt against this encyclopedic tendency, strongly advocating that sociology be constituted as a special and not an encyclopedic science. He maintained that there was no concrete class of social phenomena which was not already the subject of social science. Hence the only place for sociology lay, in his opinion, not in the discovery of a new class of phenomena hitherto neglected, but in a new analytical point of view according to which the same concrete phenomena which were the subject matters of other social sciences had not yet been studied. It is in this context that he formulated his famous distinction between social form and content.
- Published
- 1998
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