ABSTRACT
The leitmotif throughout the academic life of Joseph Alois Schumpeter was, in his own words, the research program of a ‘comprehensive sociology’.1
In his early work on the history of thought he predicted that the future direction of the social sciences would be their ‘Soziologizierung’:
The substance of the new epoch is revealed by the tendency to understand as many things around us as possible-i.e. law, religion, morality, art, politics, economy, even logic and psychology-from sociology. The analysis of cultural phenomena is the lighthouse that the total fleet of different ships on different courses is headed for. And an epoch similar to the eighteenth century is approaching.
