ABSTRACT
Sociology has been placed along with the natural sciences in the nomothetic category as being an essentially generalising discipline, while the fundamentally idiographic character of history has been strongly upheld. For the sociologist concerned with theory which purports to be general – in other words transhistorical – historical data are in fact of particular interest in one respect only; that is, in connection with the dynamic aspects of the theory, if such it possesses. Perhaps the most forceful case which has been made out for creating a sharp dichotomy between history and sociology is that which rests on the distinction between 'idiographic' and 'nomothetic' disciplines. For those sociologists who hold that basic methodological differences exist between history and sociology, historical data are of still smaller significance than for those who are concerned with general theory. In one sense then the classic tradition stands in an intermediate position in the range of different types of inquiry which make up modern sociology.
