What, then, is the future of sociology? I suggest that its future is to
become itself. what it always claimed to be. If the division of scientific
labor continues to advance, sociology will evolve increasingly into a
genuine science of social life-and nothing else. It will purify itself,
eliminating everything neither scientific nor social. The purification of sociology
is not, however, a return to a golden age of sociology in the classical
past. Pure sociology
never existed in the days of Weber and Durkheim (though Simmel used the phrase
with a different meaning [( 1917) 1950: 22]). It is a new field and a new
paradigm.
Pure sociology
changes the nature of the field so fundamentally that most sociologists will
undoubtedly resist it for the rest of their days. They will declare it
incomplete and incompetent. They will declare it impossible. Most sociologists
are sociological conservatives who uphold the century-old classical tradition. They
oppose any reform of the old sociology they have always known. They
worship the dead gods of the past, and regard any disrespect of classical sociology
as heresy. Yet scientific conservatives always fall, and so too will the
sociological conservatives. Sociology will have its revolution. It will
become truly sociological. It will cleanse itself of the unsociological
elements that now contaminate and spoil it as a science. Someday all sociology
will be pure sociology.
Pure sociology
implies the presence of several absences: ideology, teleology, psychology, and
people (see Black 1995: 847-64; 1998: xviii-ix). Being scientific implies the
end of ideology simply because science is an affair of facts-the observable
aspect of reality. Because it is impossible to deduce a value judgment from a
fact, value-laden science is impossible. Value-laden sociology is not even sociology.
It is a contradiction in terms. Accordingly, as sociology becomes
increasingly scientific, it will ultimately refuse to be identified with the
politics and morality of its practitioners. Being scientific also implies the
end of teleology, the explanation of anything as a means to something else,
such as the pursuit of a preference, the advancement of an interest, the
satisfaction of a need, or the realization of a value. The purpose of anything
is unknowable with facts alone-unobservable. Teleology is therefore
metaphysical. Primitive science (see Black 1995: 861-64).
Now consider the subject of sociology: social life. What is it? Examples
are law, violence, art, intimacy, revolution, religion, and science, including sociology
itself. Social life is not a person. It is not the behavior of a person or the
behavior of many persons. It is not located in the mind of a person-a meaning
or attitude or perception. It is not what classical sociologists
such as Weber and Durkheim mean by social life: something partly if not
entirely individual and psychological. Weber claims, for example, that
"action" is "social" only if "its subjective meaning
takes account of the behavior of others," and that only "individual
human beings" engage in social action ([1922] 1978, Vol. 1: 4, 13).
Durkheim as well: "Society can exist only in and by means of individual
minds.... Society is a synthesis of human consciousnesses" ([1912] 1995:
211, 432; see also 445). Both are pre-sociological: Social life has its own
ontology-a distinctive existence entirely unlike a person or a person's
thoughts. Although everyone is an agent of social life, social life itself is
drastically different from any person. It has no mind. It has no subjectivity.
It is observable and explainable without regard to the thoughts and feelings of
the individuals involved. Psychology is sociologically irrelevant-as irrelevant
as biology, chemistry, or physics. Social life obeys its own principles, and
the distinctive mission of sociology is to discover those principles. Otherwise it
is not a distinctive science at all.
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