ABSTRACT
Positivism has claimed the territory of human social relations and their history as a proper object for scientific study. The humanists may still argue, of course, that the distinctive character of the human subject requires a form of understanding quite distinct from that developed in the physical sciences, whether conceived positivistically or non-positivistically, but to do so they must, at least, produce new arguments. The period of French history during which Emile Durkheim's theoretical position developed resembled the period of Auguste Comte's Cours in a number of respects. Comte's work was produced in the wake of the political trauma of the French Revolution itself, whilst Durkheim entered the Ecole Normale Superieure some eight years after the parallel trauma of the Paris Commune and its brutal suppression. The concept of a social fact has a crucial role in Durkheim's arguments both for an autonomous discipline of sociology and for the necessity of a scientific knowledge of society.
