Some Methodological Issues in American Sociology

Abstract

T he disputes which took place among those called the founding fathers of American sociology were not in those early days of a sort which we today would be likely to call methodological. The controversies then were very keen on the course of social evolution and its stages, on the meaning of social progress, on the relation of sociology to social policy and political action, and on the ethical implications of sociological investigation. A leading methodological issue in more recent times was the question whether sociology is to be considered as part of the physical and biological sciences — the so-called natural sciences — or whether it was sui generis and consequently required methods of investigation somewhat different from the natural sciences. This issue had already been raised by Wilhelm Dilthey in Germany with his emphasis upon ‘verstehen’ as the clue to the Geisteswissenschaften as distinct from the Naturwissenschaften. It had been carried further there by Heinrich Rickert particularly in his book on the limits of the natural-science approach and was again later taken up by Max Weber whose sociology is known as Verstehende Soziologie. Florian Znaniecki took a similar position with an emphasis upon what he called the humanistic coefficient as the key divider of the natural from the social sciences.