ABSTRACT
It will be recalled that Durkheim conceives social facts as ‘givens’ ‘subject to observation’ which exist in and of themselves. Social facts require no raison d’être in human terms; it is vain for human reason to question the existence of these facts, for social facts are realities, no more and no less, than the facts to which physics and chemistry apply themselves. Durkheim’s critique of explanations of social facts which confine themselves to divining the purpose or end these facts serve is a critique of the anthropocentric and rationalist conception of society from which they derive.
