ABSTRACT
The contribution of Florian Znaniecki to the transatlantic transmission of ideas in both directions is outstanding and awaits a comprehensive demonstration since Znaniecki, in many respects, remains a latent classic. In the 1930s the conflict of paradigms in American sociology began to intensify. It was a time when Columbia and Harvard joined Chicago as major centres of sociology. The change of paradigm in American sociology is generally spoken of in a simplified and distorted way as if it consisted in the replacement of the field-study-oriented and supposedly a-theoretical orientation of the Chicago School with functionalism developed by Talcott Parsons at Harvard and Robert K. Merton at Columbia, cooperating respectively with Samuel Stouffer and Paul Lazarsfeld. The complete analysis of the methodological debates in the 1930s would obviously require a broad presentation of the positions of other scholars, such as Charles Ellwood, Floyd N. House mentions Ellwood and Znaniecki as the main opponents to the uncritical supporters of the statistical method.
