ABSTRACT

Sociology is a science in which there is neither an overarching theory to which all scientists are ready to commit (as is the case for biology), nor even a general mainstream to which most scholars belong (as is the case for economics). I am speaking here of sociology as a specific field in social science, whose boundaries with other fields, in particular ethnology and history, are indeterminate and quite controversial. In a context where no paradigm is prominent, it seems more relevant than in other sciences to return to the discipline’s founding works. One suspects that important heuristic paths outlined by the pioneers were not explored in as much depth as they could have been early in the discipline’s history. The investigation of only certain paths might have been favoured initially, which forever buried potentially productive modes of inquiry – perhaps for incidental reasons. Thus in sociology, since Talcott Parsons (1937), who seemed to have been aware of the risk of laying aside important heuristic ideas, a very common way of practicing theory has come to be through commenting on founders’ works. Of course, this indirect way is not the only way to proceed in the development of social sciences. Habermas (1984-7), for example, was rightly reproached for restricting, unlike Parsons (1951), his interests in sociological theory to commentaries on founders’ works. But no procedure should be neglected, however indirect and partial it may be. And Habermas was reproached above all not for commenting at length on Marx, Durkheim or G.-H. Mead, but for failing to extract empirically testable analytical models.1