Sociologists Between Two Cultures.

Processes of perception and thought are such that anyone who reads a book is necessarily selective in absorbing the author's meaning. What one reader thinks the author was saying may not coincide with what the author intended to say nor with another reader's perception of what the author meant. The first time the author read Robert M. Maclver's book "Social Causation" the parts which most caught his attention made the book seem at best a weak defense of the Verstehende approach in sociology or at worst a thoroughly animistic and anti-scientific treatise. This article, demonstrates the MacIver's book, like some of the works of other sociologists, explains a need of innovation in the basic concepts of sociology. Although Maclver will be cited more often than any other author. This paper is not intended as mere exegesis of one man's thoughts. Maclver is taken as a specimen, more or less representative of others. The interpretations offered in this article are intended to apply to sociology rather than to just this particular sociologist.