Introduction

This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the second part of this book. The part indicates to what Georg Simmel's conception of formal sociology and of its method and technique leads in actual application. Besides, a representation of Simmel's contribution to the study of sociology in this form illustrates better than any attempt at integration his opinion about the present early stage of the science. Simmel believed that a systematic presentation of sociology would be possible only in the distant future, and that for the time being the workers in that field would have to content themselves with isolated contributions. He explicitly states that even his great volume on sociology is not to be regarded as an attempt at a systematic presentation, but merely as an illustration of the application of its method to different phenomena within the field.