ABSTRACT
Methodological individualism, as a programme in social research, goes back to the nineteenth century, and the various attempts to lay a foundation for the social sciences. The rise of a specifically methodological version of individualism at this particular time probably had much to do with the divorce of the various social sciences from philosophy, and their establishment as academic disciplines at the universities of Europe and the USA. To turn the individualist theories of society into a methodological rule, principle, or programme for social scientific analysis answered a deeply felt need for philosophical justification.
