ABSTRACT
One of the most centrally significant cultural facts which the sociologist has to face in our times is the replacement of sociology by social statistics. Sociology as being concerned with structures of social relations and such social relations may be defined in terms of actors communicating expectations to one another more or less successfully, and other actors responding to these expectations in terms of compliance or conflict. In Great Britain, the country in which empiricist traditions were stronger than anywhere else, it was exceptionally difficult for sociology to establish itself because of a tradition which could best be described as based upon the book-keeping of social reform. A particularly efflorescent area of development of quantitative scales is to be found in the testing of attitudes, which for many laymen is of the essence of sociology.
