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Abstract This article is an attempt to analyse certain biological analogies and metaphors in Durkheim's The Rules of Sociological Method, and secondarily The Division of Labour in Society. The source of these borrowings in the biological sciences and the function of, and necessity of, these borrowings in the theoretical structure of the discourse are considered. The biological metaphors and analogies in question are: the concept of species, the morphological classification of organisms and societies, and the constitution of a special discipline of pathology in sociology.
Paul Hirst (Thu,) studied this question.