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In this autobiographic work, Raymond Boudon reviews his trajectory from his beginning as a student at the École Normale Supérieure to the last stages of his career. Boudon describes his main intellectual influences and concerns throughout his life and how they were displayed in his works.

As the social sciences deal with macrophenomena which are caused by individual human actions, they have to use a theory of human behaviour. They use basically three types of theory: the rational-utilitarian theory, the causalist theory which sees behaviour as caused by social, cultural or biological forces, and the «rational psychology» in Nisbet’s sense. The three theories are important in the sense that they have shown their capacity to explain convincingly puzzling phenomena. Type I and II theories have been claimed to be potentially general. They are not since there are familiar phenomena they are unable to explain. Type III can by contrast be claimed to be general. Amartya Sen has made the point that the rational-utilitarian theory treats human beings as rational idiots. Type II treats them as irrational idiots. These aggressive metaphors draw the attention on the fact that human beings answer the situations they are confronted to by devising systems of arguments which they perceive as strong: by being cognitively rational.

La diversidad de la sociología puede ser capturada con la ayuda de cuatro tipos ideales. El primero es la sociología informativa o «de consultoría»: aquella que produce datos y análisis orientados hacia la toma de decisiones. El segundo es la sociología crítica, que identifica los defectos de la sociedad y propone remedios para los mismos. El tercero es la sociología que intenta despertar emociones describiendo los fenómenos sociales de una manera vívida. Un cuarto tipo, el cognitivo, tiene por objetivo la explicación de fenómenos sociales enigmáticos. Las cuatro orientaciones se encuentran tanto en la sociología contemporánea como en la clásica, pero no son igualmente valiosas. Tocqueville, Weber o Durkheim ejemplifican el cuarto tipo, pero varios factores han causado que actualmente los otros tres se expandan a sus expensas. Como consecuencia de esta diversidad en la sociología, y de su alejamiento respecto del tipo cognitivo, el escepticismo sobre la disciplina ha crecido en los últimos años.