ABSTRACT
As one might expect, there are some highly diligent attempts to introduce and to precis the Rules so as to make its ideas available to students and to a wide popular audience. The best of these in recent British sociology (for example, Ronald Fletcher (1971, Vol. 2, section 2A) or Anthony Giddens (1971: Ch. 6; 1972:29-38; 1978: Ch. 2) are accurate and well balanced. But even in these authors, major problems arise when simple presentation moves on to assessment and criticism. When Durkheim says he wants to introduce a specifically scientific approach into the study of social facts, Fletcher expostulates that this is an utterly fatuous attempt to clamber ‘ever more frantically up a gum tree’. For Durkheim, says Fletcher, the only truth seems to be scientific truth, a ‘dogmatic scientism which clothed inaccuracies and logical errors’ (Fletcher, 1971; Vol. 2, 288, 299). In the end Durkheim’s inconsistencies in dealing with such problems as teleology intruded inescapably into his ‘science’, for how could he advocate an antivoluntaristic sociology if not voluntaristically?
