Citation

Marshall DA. Sociol. Q. 2008; 49(2): 209-235.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, Midwest Sociological Society, Publisher Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1111/j.1533-8525.2008.00112.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Donald Black insists that sociology must be purged of its psychological elements in order to become a genuinely distinct and scientific discipline. But such “purification” is simultaneously unnecessary, undesirable, and unattainable. It is unnecessary because the scientific shortcomings of sociology are indigenous and have nothing to do with psychologism. Indeed, a more scientific sociology would look more, not less, like psychology. Purity is undesirable in that it is not only not a scientific virtue, but is antithetical to the very scientific values that Black invokes to justify it. His systems are neither theories nor laws, but heuristics, more akin to common sense than to scientific theory. Finally, purity is unattainable because though society is indeed discontinuous with the individuals who make it up, it and all theorizing about it, are ontologically and conceptually dependent upon them.