10 - Conclusion

Summary

The primary achievement of the pioneers was that of envisaging the very possibility of a science of human society, of spelling out what its requirements would be, both normatively and in terms of methods of data collection and analysis and theory development, and of making, in the course of their own work, significant progress in each of these respects. The further progress of sociological science could best be achieved by sustaining their efforts in regard to the accurate and detailed description of population regularities and the proposal of social mechanisms or processes generating these regularities that are expressed in terms of individual action, treated as far as possible as rational, and that are open to empirical test. Recent developments in sociology also aimed at advancing its scientific status, notably computational sociology and analytical sociology, would seem, despite claims of ‘new paradigms’, to be of greatest potential insofar as they are in fact aligned with the efforts of the pioneers.