ABSTRACT
The Law of the Transformation of Things We saw above (pp. 136-46) that in his critique of the humanist conception of the object of sociology Durkheim denounces the psychologistic reductionism inherent in that conception; a reductionism which, he claims, inverts the given order of relations in nature. Humanism reduces sociology to an extension or variant of psychology. So far Durkheim’s critique has remained on the familiar ground of his realist epistemology and on the firmer ground of his analysis of the teleological form of explanation which is part and parcel of the humanist discourse. But in chapter 5 Durkheim also confronts a variant of reductionism which presents a more serious threat to his position and forces him to change his mode of argument against reductionism.1 This variant of reductionism takes a consistent realist or empiricist epistemological position as its point of departure in opposing ‘holist’ conceptions of society. It poses acute difficulties for Durkheim because it takes exactly the same epistemological position as he does and he cannot refute it by reference to ‘givens’ or by attacking idealism.
