ABSTRACT
Kingsley Davis has argued that we should abandon the notion that functionalism is a special form of sociological analysis. It is sociological analysis, albeit occasionally clouded by misleading terminology. In at least one reader the effect of his thoughtful and wide-ranging paper was to stimulate reflection on our notions of function and cause and on the relations between them. The starting point of these reflections was the question: Does not Professor Davis’ argument rest on a special and hardly universal view of what sociological analysis is or should be?
