The Role of Theory in Social Research

S OME WILL perhaps consider it presumptuous for one who has come to be known primarily as a theorist to talk about empirical research. I have done some work in the latter field and hope to make some contributions to it before many years. But apart from that I can perhaps but cite a statement of which Max Weber was fond, In order to understand Caesar it is not necessary to have been Caesar. So perhaps it is possible for one who has not been quite so completely immersed in empirical research as some of you, but who has nevertheless been a good deal concerned with certain of its problems, to help illuminate them. I should, however, like to make myself clear in advance. The current state of sociological science is not such that anyone is entitled to dogmatize with an air of canonical authority. To my mind the only hope of reaching that fundamental unity of outlook and purpose which I think almost all of us feel should actuate the workers in a field of science, is to attempt seriously, objectively and respectfully to learn from each other's work, thought and experience. It is my very strong conviction that, if the current situation be approached in this spirit, and the trouble taken to get to the bottom of other people's problems, there will turn out to be far more unity on fundamentals than appears at first sight. What I can do on an occasion like this seems to me to be to present to you with due humility for your consideration a few of the results of my own thinking about and experience in sociological work. Practically all competent observers are, I think, agreed that there is a basic difference in the situation in such sciences as physics and chemistry, and those in the social group, particularly sociology. I do not mean to deny that the former group have their crucially important unsolved problems and areas of controversy. These, however, occur either on the frontiers of the technical part of the science itself or in the field of the interpretation of the broad significance of its results as a whole. But there is a very substantial core of material on which there is entirely general agreement. What should go into the more elementary courses in these fields is not in controversy. Moreover this common core is not only a body of discrete miscellaneous facts-it is closely integrated with a logically elaborated body of theory, much of which, like the fundamental equations of dynamics in mechanics, is stated in a highly generalized form.