In one respect, however, modem sociology is not classical: It is less
scientific than classical
sociology. Nearly all classical sociologists were explicitly and
militantly scientific. Apart from Karl Marx (who never called himself a
sociologist), they advocated a sociology free of politics and morality. They
endorsed what Max Weber called "ethical neutrality" in sociology
([1917] 1949), and embraced what he called "science as a vocation"
([1919] 1946). Georg Simmel, for example, argued against anyone who might
question the scientific status of sociology, and called the field "a
science with its own subject matter that is differentiated, by division of
labor, from the subject matters of all other sciences" ([1917] 1950: 13;
see also [1908] 1965). Vilfredo Pareto began his four-volume treatise The Mind
and Society with a chapter called "The Scientific Approach" ([1923]
1935), and described his work as an effort to extend Einstein's theory of
relativity to sociology
(Feuer 1973: 49-50). The scientific possibilities of sociology seemed
limitless.
But modern sociology
has had a scientific devolution. Many sociologists now reject and express
contempt for the idea of a value-neutral and otherwise scientific sociology.
Some totally dismiss the distinction between facts and values-central to all
science. Some confuse value-- neutrality (a lack of value judgments) with
objectivity (a lack of bias), and argue that because no one is objective no one
is value-neutral (e.g., Wallerstein 2000: 307-08)-as if the human origins of
science make all science evaluative and none of it factual. Others act as if
value judgments derive from facts alone-a logical impossibility. And still
others openly pursue an ideological agenda in the name of sociology itself. Here
modem sociologists are not classical at all. They are pre-classical.
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