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The article analyzes the scientific theories of Thomas Kuhn and its application to contemporary sociology. Kuhn sees science at any given point in time as dominated by a specific paradigm (defined for the moment as a fundamental image of a science's subject matter). Normal science is a period of accumulation of knowledge in which scientists work on, and expand, the reigning paradigm. Inevitably, however, such work spawns anomalies, or things that cannot be explained within the existing paradigm. If these anomalies mount, a crisis stage is reached, which ultimately may end in a revolution in which the reigning paradigm is overthrown and a new one takes its place at the center of the science. Thus a new reigning paradigm is born and the stage is set for the cycle to repeat itself. It is during the period of revolution that great changes in scientific status take place. This view clearly places Kuhn at odds with the lay and textbook conception of scientific development, which suggests that scientific progress is cumulative. In response to those who criticized his vagueness about the concept of a paradigm in his first edition, Kuhn offers a very narrow definition of a paradigm in the epilogue to the second edition. There he equates paradigms with exemplars, or the concrete puzzle solutions which when employed as models or examples, can replace explicit rules as a basis for the solution of the remaining puzzles of normal science.

The sociological perspectives of Max Weber and the "Frankfurt School" have been viewed as polarities in much of the recent literature. The Frankfurt sociologists were advocates of a neo-Marxism that stressed dialectical reasoning and rejected the notion of value-neutrality. Weber adhered to the canons of causal logic and cultivated the ideal of objectivity in social research. Notwithstanding these theoretical and methodological differences, Weber and the advocates of critical theory arrived at surprisingly similar conclusions about the "fate" of the modern world. Weber saw the advent of a bureaucratic "iron cage" which would effectively negate the role of the individual, while the Frankfurt sociologists posited the onset of an "administered world" in which human activity would be smothered in an ever-expanding network of management and control. Given these commonalities, a revision of the standard evaluation of Weber and critical theory is suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a letter to the editor in response to the article by Snizek about the relationship between theory and method proposed in a paradigmatic analysis of sociology, in the November 1976 issue.