ABSTRACT
This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. The part addresses questions having to do with the overall methods and philosophical premises that scientific sociology shares in common with all other natural sciences, and closes with a discussion of some leading objections to regarding sociology as scientific and therefore to applying these methods and premises to it. It rests on the claim that all scientific analysis pursues both practical control over the world and cognitive understanding of the world. Scientific analysis is portrayed as consisting of eight information elements, whose transformations into one another are systematically regulated by twelve sets of techniques and two value elements. Scientific disciplines are, in a word and by definition, more-or-less integrated substantively, and this integration manifests itself in each information component of scientific procedure.
