Sociology as a Strict Science

Sociology and philosophy seem to have this in common: in spite of notable progress in special fields, the discipline as a whole lacks unity and fails to accumulate knowledge. Both disciplines are split into separate schools between which there exist no clearly defined relations and no notable increase of insight. Thus after an auspicious beginning Pitirim Sorokin’s (1927, 1942, 1947) attempt to create a sociological theory in the vein of Descartes’ analytical geometry by resolving (real) “multibonded” “sociocultural groups” into (abstract) “unibonded” relations failed to produce a convincing result for lack of logical rigor. Sorkin would have failed even if he had not subsequently (1937-41) attempted an “integral” theory of “ideational,” idealistic, and “sensate” “Supersystems” which looked like a parody of Comte’s law of the three stages. For similar reasons Talcott Parsons’ (1937) attempt to look for a common denominator for the classics in social theory (viz. Alfred Marshall, Pareto, Durkheim and Max Weber) and subsequently (1951, 1960, 1966, 1977) to elaborate a theory of action systems seems to have come to nothing. One is tempted to ask, “who reads Parsons nowadays?” Sociological theory continues to veer between diverse paradigms which seem to resist any attempt to integrate them into a unified paradigm (e.g., G. Ritzer 1981; J.Alexander 1982-83; R.Collins 1984, A.Giddens 1984). With postmodernism and poststructuralism as the latest offspring, disarray and eclecticism seem to reign supreme and discourage any further attempt to elevate sociology to a rigorous science. At the same time a closer look at philosophy may help us to solve problems which sociological theory has failed to solve or even address. From Plato and Aristotle to Husserl (1913) and Nicolai Hartmann (1949/1953), Mario Bunge (1962) and Ervin