ABSTRACT
Les Regles de la methode sociologique is an abstract formulation of the method we have observed in the first two books, De la division du travail social and Le Suicide. The Emile Durkheimian conception of sociology is based on a theory of the social fact. Durkheim's aim is to demonstrate that there may and must be a sociology which is an objective science conforming to the model of the other sciences, and whose subject is the social fact. Classification is based on the principle that societies differ in degree of complexity. Durkheim indicates somewhere that a society (he is referring to Japanese society) may absorb a certain economic growth of outside origin without, however, having its fundamental nature altered. Classification of social genera and species would then be radically different from determination of phases in economic or historical development. The distinction between the normal and the pathological plays an important role in Durkheim's thought.
