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In a hypothetical format, evidence is advanced to support the proposition that sociology is in a critical stage of its development. The argument presented is that sociology very soon must abandon, at least in large part, its traditional assumptions favoring antireductionism and purposeful (teleological) explanations for human social behavior to avoid losing all academic recognition as a science (or even pre-science)
Although it was rather clearly foreseen early in the last quarter of the 20th century that sociobiology would eventually absorb the scientific aspects of sociology and supplant it (Sade, 1975:263), the speed with which this occurred was remarkable. By the mid-1980s, the trends in this direction were commonly recognized, and by the end of the 20th century, essentially nothing remained of sociology within the academic community. This paper outlines in a historical context the factors responsible for this eventuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In view of the revanchist ideology that often passes under the rubric of sociobiology, a perspective that insists on the learned nature of social behavior is welcome. Undoubtedly, a search for the causes and careers of human behavior is a legitimate enterprise in sociology, but in the context of Molm's paper, a different question must be raised regarding behaviorist sociology. The root criticism of behavioral sociology, it seems to me, is the one she attributes to symbolic interactionism. The view that human emit behavior, Molm contends, is not a mechanistic theory at all because operant behaviors are not automatically elicited by any prior stimulus, they simply occur not elicited by a stimulus. If something that is yet to happen is the cause of the behavior that is about to be emitted, then surely it is the anticipation of receiving the reinforcement that is causing the behavior. I am sure Molm is correct that the argument about behavioral sociology is really about behavioral sociology is really about the goals and aims of science.