Introduction

Professional sociology positively undertaken in the spirit of the Enlightenment imagines that knowledge can be secured on true foundations and thus serve as the basis of progressive change in society. Philosophy is to provide the foundations and science the knowledge. The change takes the form of piecemeal social engineering, otherwise known as liberal reform. Those sociologies making the interpretative turn do not so much doubt that the house of knowledge has stable foundations as question just what it is that the foundations are made of. Rather than true knowledge being secured by being expressed in the terms of a formally incorrigible language and on the basis of valid scientific method, the interpretative position points to the irremediable dependence of formally correct language and valid scientific method on practical reasoning involving constant and unavoidable recourse to commonsense knowledge of social structures.