ABSTRACT
The first task of the sociologist is to review the general state of investigation into his problem. All too often it falls to his lot to deal with stray problems to which all the sciences in turn have made their individual contribution without anyone having ever paid any attention to the continuity of the investigation as a whole. This chapter gives a mere survey of past contributions to the problem of generations. Two approaches to the problem have been worked out in the past: a 'positivist' and a 'romantic-historical' one. Two schools represent two antagonistic types of attitudes towards reality, and the different ways in which they approach the problem reflect this contrast of basic attitudes. Valuable, even a stroke of genius, is Pinder's idea of the 'non-contemporaneity of the contemporaneous', as well as his concept of entelechies—both the result of the romantic-historical approach and both undoubtedly unattainable by positivism.
