ABSTRACT
There has been in the history of social thought a constant battle over the true nature of society and about the best way to understand and explain it. A major divide goes between those who see society as an aggregate, collection, or complex of individuals and those who see society as some kind of ordered whole and/or unitary collective. The former try to explain social phenomena in terms of individuals and their interaction, while the latter maintain that this is not possible without essential reference to the social wholes of which they are part and/or the collectives to which they belong.1 The opposition between these conceptions of society was inherited by the social sciences and divided them in two conflicting camps. With the emergence of the social sciences, however, the metaphysical issue was increasingly turned into a methodological issue. As we shall see, this does not mean that the metaphysical issue disappeared, only that it receded into the background.
