ABSTRACT
Durkheim maintains that this distinction must necessarily b e included ‘in the definition with which all research must begin’ in order that the science studies the truly general and typical facts of its domain and not irregularities and aberrations. But why is this particular type of distinction, between ‘two different varieties of facts’, necessary? It is not a necessary type of distinction in all sciences: there are not normal and pathological ‘varieties of facts’ in, for example, physics. Despite the reference to the ‘definition with which all research must begin’, the necessity of this particular type of distinction does not follow from the demands of scientific explanation in sociology. It is a distinction which is given prior to the science and which concerns the ‘usefulness’ of that science in respect of certain given ‘problems’. Thus, for Durkheim, the scientific rationale for this distinction is a pre-scientific social ‘need’; the very foundation of his ‘social science’ is subordinate to the dictates of pragmatism. The character of the science is to be determined by the pregiven applications of the science that are required of it by extra-scientific factors.
