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The article presents information about sociology, history and the abstract perspective. In a recent paper, professor Kai Erikson has compared several implicit assumptions which prevail in the work of contemporary sociologists with those of contemporary historians. He concludes from his analysis that sociologists could avoid certain kinds of problems if they were to become more conscious of their immersion in historical processes and were to adopt certain of the perspectives of historians. With Erikson's diagnosis of the shortcomings of current sociological research one is in considerable agreement. Nevertheless, it is not clear that the adoption of Erikson's recommendations would do much to alter what he identifies as problematic in sociology. Indeed, one has a sense of foreboding that should his prescriptions be taken too seriously, the development of sociological knowledge would be still more thwarted than it is by the problems he locates. After restating several points in Erikson's argument, one will outline a point of view which is somewhat at variance with his and attempt to demonstrate ways in which it is responsive to the issues he raises. This point of view may be of some general interest also because it arises not from the concreteness of history, but from the abstraction of philosophy and mathematics.

The article presents various comments on the article "Problems in the Application of Sociological Method to Historical Data: A Case Example" published in the May 1969 issue of the journal "The American Sociologist." Since one of the authors is a historian and one a sociologist, the author has a special interest in the interrelationships of the two disciplines and, particularly, the use of historical data for sociological analysis. It was this interest which led them to turn so eagerly to Kai Erikson's "Wayward Puritans," especially after reading that it had received the MacIver Award. It was their hope that Professor Erikson might respond with an account of obstacles he encountered that his training had left him unprepared to handle. They had also hoped that Erikson would discuss more fully their contention that sociologists tend to handle data and the supposed existing state of the society as though the society were not facing any large-scale social change that could not be inferred from a limited set of historical data.