ABSTRACT
Sociology is an exact science and has to apply the method of science. The philosophy of history and the search for historical laws are forms of inquiry which result from different and independent needs of cognition and produce a type of knowledge that is speculative and not exact. The philosophy of history also embraces two fields of philosophic inquiry which flank the field of exact historical inquiry. The first is the epistemology of history, the second the metaphysics of history. The epistemology of history is the inquiry into the thought forms which create "history" out of the available data of the historical actuality. The essential characteristic of the exact historical inquiry is an interest in the historical actuality as such directed toward the factualness of its content and free from all metaphysical sublimation. Historical laws are related to the actually effective laws as philosophic knowledge is related to exact knowledge.
