ABSTRACT
Durkheim specified that sociology should use the methods of observation and hypothesis testing with which the natural sciences operate. However social phenomenon are very different entities to observe than natural phenomenon. How, for example, do we identify social class? For Durkheim the fundamental subject matter for sociology was moral phenomenon. Moral phenomenon cannot be directly observed, but must be observed through the use of indexes; through other phenomenon which express a presence of the underlying moral conditions. In The Division of Labour and Society Durkheim argued that law provided an index of social solidarity. By observing the law and legal institutions we could identify different forms of underlying social solidarities. Moreover, whilst the forms of social solidarity were difficult to get at, the form and content of law can be easily observed from the written record of legal history and the actual operation of institutions such as the criminal justice system. Durkheim’s positivism is a methodology of using indices or easily observable entities as expressions or reflections of underlying moral phenomenon. Through the registration and calculation of movements and trends in such observable indices, we can come to understand trends and changes in the underlying moral phenomenon. This method was clearly visible in Durkheim’s work in Suicide, where he used the official suicide statistics as indices of social cohesion and social isolation. In using such positivist methodologies Durkheim argues that there are no crucial distinctions between the natural sciences and the social sciences. The subject matter of the social sciences is social facts not visible to crude observation, but these social facts are to be treated as natural things. Moreover, as is clear from Durkheim’s Rules of Sociological Methods, social science can be value free. The sociologist or criminologist is to be detached and objective in his analysis. Society and social phenomenon are actual entities existing ‘out there’, and it is possible for the observer to come to describe and explain them using various other indices.
