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The article presents answer to sociologist Victor Lidz on his criticism over the research paper "Toward a Radical sociology" by Albert Szymanski. Lidz seems to Szymanski to focus on two major points: Lidz argues that corporate sociology is approaching value-freeness while radical sociology, because of its "idol-worship" is unable to be objective; and he, as a Parsonian, argues that the institutionalization of certain kinds of ethical and professional values produces objective science. Rather than picking at various minor points and insinuations made by Lidz, Szymanski attempts in this reply to answer his critique by refuting these two positions. Lidz, in arguing for a value free sociology fails to comprehend that values and beliefs have a fundamental resonance with one another. That is, that there is a strong psychological tendency for values and beliefs to fall into consistent patterns. Lidz argues extensively that the development of science hinges on the institutionalization of the value of objectivity. His argument is either trite or simply mistaken.

The article presents criticism on sociologist Albert Szymanski's research paper "Toward a Radical Sociology." Szymanski is quite direct in setting aside as an ideal the establishment of conceptual frameworks that might ensure the objectivity of sociological knowledge. Central to his position is a rejection of sociologist Max Weber's methodology based on the sharp distinction between empirical judgments and evaluational judgments, a distinction that Szymanski recognizes to be "impeccable" in logic, yet holds to be a "philosophical sophism," and on the assertion that all intellectual disciplines must give strong primacy among their commitments to the ideal of objectivity. Citing the sociology of knowledge truth that all knowledge within the social sciences is in certain respects conditioned by the historical environment within which it is developed, hence not "objective" in the sense of being free of all social partisanship, Szymanski argues that a radical sociology would not be any the less objective were it to accept the constraints of adopting certain "humanistic" commitments among its fundamental values.

The article demonstrates the possibility of supplementing substantive considerations with materials developed through an analysis of intellectual systems for underlying structural dimensions. The central issue raised here concerns the character of the selected representation of the mode of thought, i.e. the property of the mode of thought that is selected to represent it. Insofar as studies in the sociology of knowledge take some substantive property of a mode of thought and seek to understand its social origin, their point of departure is not the mode of thought per se but certain of its substantive properties. Portions of two different intellectual systems are treated empirically to ascertain the manner in which their demonstrations of proof are structured. These structures are uncovered through the use of Gutmann scale analysis. While any set of branching deductions may be considered as partly ordered set, the findings reported in this paper show that the portions of the intellectual system chosen for analysis converge to an almost perfectly ordered set. Finally, known properties of Gutmann scales are assigned to the structural dimension, and implications for the sociology of knowledge are drawn.

These studies clearly suggest that religious attitudes and death attitudes are related to one another. It is the purpose of this paper to raise further questions about this relationship, questions having implications for several areas of sociology, especially for the sociology of knowledge. The sociology of knowledge is concerned with how one's social situation affects one's world view. Its basic assumption has been enunciated by Mannheim who approvingly quotes Marx' belief that "it is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but on the contrary their social existence which determines their consciousness" (1964: 125-126). If this assumption is correct then one would predict that the nature of the relationship between death attitudes and religious attitudes would vary depending on the social background of the subjects. This possibility, however, has not previously been explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]