ABSTRACT
The truth is that sociology was long considered a canker, or at least a superfluous preoccupation, by a wide spectrum of humanity. Sociological discoveries concern the human spirit as a constituent of the human world, as a part among parts, creature among creatures, each purely temporal, yet each equally essential. Constraints of space prevent us from dilating on the methods that sociology self-evidently still has in common with the older sciences—for example, jurisprudence, history, theology, economics. A sociologist is obliged to name his historical location. The truth of a social event—for example, the founding of a new state, a new friendship, or club—therefore consists of four elements of truth. Sociology in any form is possible only as a polyphonic form of cognition. Looked at from the opposite pole, we recognize herein the peculiarity of its contents.
