A Closer Look at the Emergence of the Rules

Although the situation is now beginning to change, most sociologists still treat the Rules as a single, if flawed, statement of methodological dogma and assume that Durkheim conceived it as an expression of a projected final summation of methodological intent. They also think Durkheim simply abandoned this positional document as he began to move away, in the late 1890s, from the allegedly rather crude orientations embodied in the Division of 1893.