ABSTRACT
We must examine a doctrine which has had an important place in the history of individualism, but which needs to be very carefully analysed and distinguished from other doctrines which have often been held either to entail it, or to be entailed by it, or to be equivalent with it. Methodological individualism is a doctrine about explanation which asserts that all attempts to explain social (or individual) phenomena are to be rejected (or, according to a current, more sophisticated version, rejected as ‘rock-bottom’ explanations) unless they are couched wholly in terms of facts about individuals.
