Structure, Time and Reality

In evaluating structural as against any other type of social analysis two claims are usually made: first, that structural analysis lends to the social data a higher degree of comparability; ¹ and second, that it renders them more readily quantifiable. ² Both claims are borne out by the approach here developed. In as much as it implies the abstraction of the relatively invariant features of social situations—roles and their interrelation— it enhances the comparability of the social situations themselves. It is for the same reason, incidentally, that the concept of structure assumes its fundamental importance in logic: there, too, comparability (without which there could be no systematizing of anything) is considered to rest on ‘relation likeness’, i.e. on structure. ³ And in as much as in this process of abstraction we progressively leave behind (or ‘bracket away’) the qualitative characteristics of social situations—the aims, needs, ideas, and emotions bound up in human behaviour—we should also be able to present our data in quantifiable form.