ABSTRACT
The anti-quantitative orientation may have seemed to derive emotional as well as theoretical support from a partial and imperfect reading of C. Wright Mills's famous critique of American sociology. The specific methods – as distinct from the philosophy – of empiricism are clearly suitable and convenient for work on many problems. In discussing the sources of the hostility to quantitative sociology one embarks upon an interesting sortie into the sociology of sociological knowledge in Britain. True, there have been the epistemological sources of hostility associated with particular schools within sociology. British sociology's most distinguished name, L. T. Hobhouse, clearly embodies the intellectual ambivalence about a quantitative approach on the one hand and social philosophy on the other – an indecisiveness of orientation well described by Philip Abrams. Probability statements are therefore an essential tool for almost every sort of sociological inference, whatever the philosophers of science and their acolytes in sociology may feel.
