Theory as Productive of Certainty: Teleology, Cause, Reason, and Emancipation

Abstract

As I have stated in the Introduction, it is my intention to provide a new theoretical account of the formation of crime, transgression, and by implication the law, by answering theoretically the question ‘How are the capacities of individuals implicated in the formation of the “structural social entities” that surround them?’ One of the features of this book is that it does not take at face value many ideas that are conventionally taken for granted in criminology or the social sciences in general, and one of those concepts is ‘theory’. If I am to produce a theoretical account then it is necessary that I should provide an acceptable account of what a theory is. This is far from straightforward. Therefore, in this first part of the book I will attempt to answer the question: What is Theory? My strategy for undertaking this task is as follows. I first intend to set out an account of what theory has in the past been taken to be, or what it has been taken that it should do. This is of course necessarily a task with a historical aspect, and I will outline ‘A Brief History of Theory’. I will suggest that theory has variously been taken to be a tool for ascertaining the purpose of things, or for ascertaining the cause of things.