SOME REPLIES AND SOME REFLECTIONS.

The article presents author's replies and some reflections regarding criticism against his earlier essays on sociology. One of the main assertions the author developed in chapters one and two of Essays in Sociological Explanation is that sociology as a field both enjoys and suffers from a great diversity of approaches, outlooks, and schools of thought. The statements by the three reviewers lend strength to this assertion, since each selected such different ingredients from the body of ideas in the book and reacted in such different ways to these ingredients. He takes pleasure in the fact that my ideas have excited such a diversity of responses among the critics. He organizes his remarks under three general headings: the nature and scope of sociology; the character of sociological explanation; and the explanation of change. In chapter two he raised these questions formally and explicitly, and tried to lay out the kinds of norms that sociologists do--or should--observe as they do their own and assess others' work.