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The Epistemology of Pure Sociology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Donald Black
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Extract

Sociologists lack clarity and consensus about their scholarly mission. Some are purely and coldly scientific, some morally or politically critical, and some warmly or sentimentally humanistic. Their ultimate concerns include the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. Others are not explicit or even self-conscious about what they seek to accomplish, and still others combine various styles—scientific, critical, and humanistic—and are difficult or impossible to classify at all. Their discourse is cacophonous. The utterances of some are uninteresting to others, and their assessments of one another commonly seem completely misdirected.

Type
Review Section Symposium
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , Summer 1995 , pp. 829 - 870
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 1995 

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References

1 These concerns correspond to three “action orientations” delineated by Talcott Parsons in The Social System 12-14, 327 (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1951) (“Parsons, Social System”). For an elaboration, see Black, Donald, “Social Control as a Dependent Variable” (orig. pub. 1984), in The Social Structure of Right and Wrong 19–21, esp. n.34 (San Diego: Academic Press, 1993) (“Black, ‘Social Control’; “Black, Right and Wrong”). Google Scholar

2 See, e.g., the political labels applied to my work, discussed in the section below entitled “Epistemological Shock.” See also Frankford, David M., “Donald Black's Social Structure of Right and Wrong: Normativity without Agents,” 20 Law & Soc. Inquiry 787 (1995).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Epistemology is the philosophy of knowledge, including its nature and evaluation. See, e.g., Harré, R., The Philosophies of Science: An Introductory Survey 2, 5–8 (London: Oxford University Press, 1972).Google Scholar

4 A paradigm is a strategy of explanation that guides a branch of science. The term first appeared in Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of scientific Revolutions 10 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962) (“Kuhn, Scientific Revolutions”).Google Scholar

5 Science is the study of variation in reality. A variation is a difference, and reality is that which is said to exist. See Black, Donald, “A Strategy of Pure Sociology” (orig. pub. 1979), in id., Right and Wrong 158 (“Black, ‘Pure Sociology’”). Compare Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 13 (orig. pub. 1921). trans. D. F. Pears & B. F. McGuinness (2d ed. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971) (“Wittgenstein, Tractatus”). Google Scholar

6 A theory is an explanation. An explanation orders a fact with a general proposition. A fact is an observable aspect of reality, and to order a fact is to show that it obeys a pattern. As a branch of science, therefore, the mission of theoretical sociology is to order differences in the observable aspect of social reality. I further seek to formulate theory from which it is possible to deduce—and thereby predict—patterns of social variation. On the nature of a fact, compare Wittgenstein, Tractatus 7. On scientific explanation as logical deduction, see Braithwaite, Richard Bevan, Scientific Explanation: A Study of the Function of Theory, Probability and Law in Science (orig. pub. 1953) (New York: Harper & Row, 1960); Hempel, Carl G., “Aspects of Scientific Explanation,”in id., Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science 331 (New York: Free Press, 1965); Homans, George C., The Nature of Social Science ch. 1 (New York Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967).Google Scholar

7 The “shape of social space” and other concepts in this section will be elaborated in later sections. I shall also describe my strategy as a geometry of social life.Google Scholar

8 New York: Academic Press, 1976 (“Black, Behavior of Law”). Google Scholar

9 For further details on “the social structure of a case,” see Black, Donald, Sociological Justice 7-18 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989) (“Black, Sociological Justice”). Google Scholar

10 For a detailed overview of Right and Wrong, see de la Roche, Roberta Senechal, “Beyond the Behavior of Law,” 20 Law & Soc. Inquiry 777 (1995).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 The English translation (from German) appeared in 1959 (New York: Basic Books).Google Scholar

12 Popper, Karl, The Logic of Scientific Discovery 40 (2d ed. New York: Harper & Row, 1968) (“Popper, Logic”). See also Gell-Mann, Murray, The Quark and the Jaguar: Adventures in the Simple and the Complex 78-79 (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1994) (“Gell-Mann, Quark and Jaguar”). Google Scholar

13 Popper, Logic 40.Google Scholar

14 Quantitative measurement need not entail a determination of precise differences (interval measurement), but might be as simple as a determination of whether more or less of something occurs (ordinal measurement), or merely whether something occurs at all (nominal measurement).Google Scholar

One philosopher remarks that we cannot speak of a “fact”—let alone the validity of a theory—without quantification: “The function of numbering and measuring is indispensable even in order to produce the raw material of ‘facts' that are to be reproduced and unified in theory.” Cassirer, Ernst, Substance and Function and Einstein's Theory of Relativity 115 (punctuation edited) (orig. pub. 1910 & 1921), trans. William Curtis Swabey & Marie Collins Swabey (Chicago: Open Court, 1923); see also id. at 116.Google Scholar

15 Black, Behavior of Law, 40-46. “Relational distance” refers to the degree to which people “participate in one another's lives,” measurable, for example, with “the scope, frequency, and length of interaction” between them, “the age of their relationship, and the nature and number of links between them in a social network.” Id. at 40-41. In this formulation, “law” refers to the quantity of governmental social control—the amount of governmental authority applied to a particular case. This quantity increases, for example, with a call to the police, an arrest, a lawsuit, a victory for the prosecution or plaintiff, and the severity of a remedy. Id. at 2-3. The Pattern I formulate is actually curvilinear, with law decreasing at the smallest and greatest distances in relational space, such as within families or friendships and between different societies or tribes. Within a single society such as modem America, however, the relationship is direct. For further details on my quantitative conception of law, see id., “A Note on the Measurement of Law” (orig. pub. 1979), in id., The Manners and Customs of the Police 209-17 (New York: Academic Press, 1980).Google Scholar

16 E.g., Samuel R. Gross & Robert Mauro, “Pattern of Death: An Analysis of Racial Disparities in Capital Sentencing and Homicide Victimization,” 37 Stan. L. Rev. 58–59 (1984).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 But see, e.g., Marc Galanter, “Why the ‘Haves' Come Out Ahead: Speculations on the Limits of Legal Change,” 9 Law & Soc'y Rev. 95 (1974); Baumgartner, M. P., “Social Control from Below,” in Black, Donald, ed., Toward a General Theory of Social Control, vol. 1: Fundamentals 331–39 (Orlando, Fla.: Academic Press, 1984) (“Baumgartner, ‘Social Control from Below’”; John Griffiths, “The Division of Labor in Social Control,”id. at 37 (“Griffiths, ‘Division of Labor in Social Control’“).Google Scholar

18 Durkheim, Emile, The Division of Labor in Society (orig. pub. 1893), trans. George Simpson (New York: Free Press, 1964) (“Durkheim, Division of Labor”). Google Scholar

19 Classical theory may even be classical—unchanged and unchallenged—largely because it is untestable. To be untestable, however, is not necessarily to be unimportant. The theories of Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud are commonly regarded as untestable, for example, but few would question their importance. And scientists do not necessarily discard a theory simply because its testability is not immediately obvious. In physics, for instance, many recognize the potential importance of a new conception of elementary particles known as superstring theory. In this conception (developed by John Schwarz and Michael Green, among others), the behavior of particles is regarded as the vibration of strings extending throughout the universe. Virtually all physicists agree that superstring theory, if workable, will be revolutionary, yet no one can yet specify how the theory might be tested or even whether it will ever yield testable implications at all. See, e.g., Sheldon L. Glashow (with Ben Bova), Interactions: A Journey through the Mind of a Particle Physicist and the Matter of This World 330-35 (New York: Warner Books, 1988) (“Glashow, Interactions”); Schwarz, John, quoted in Davies, P. C. W. & Brown, Julian, eds., Superstrings: A Theory of Everything? 84 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).Google Scholar

20 E.g., Karl Marx & Engels, Friedrich, Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy, ed. Lewis S. Feuer (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1959) (“Marx & Engels, Basic Writings”). Google Scholar

21 E.g., Weber, Max, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (orig. pub. 1922), trans. A. M. Henderson & Talcott Parsons (New York: Free Press, 1947) (“Weber. Them of Social and Economic Organization”). Google Scholar

22 E.g., Simmel, Georg, The Sociology of Georg Simmel (orig. pub. 1908), trans. Kurt H. Wolff (New York: Free Press, 1950) (“Simmel, Sociology”). Google Scholar

23 E.g., Parsons, Social System (cited in note 1).Google Scholar

24 E.g., Luhmann, Niklas, A Sociological Theory of Law (orig. pub. 1972), trans. Elizabeth King & Martin Albrow (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985) (“Luhmann, Theory of Law”). Google Scholar

25 E.g., Jürgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis (orig. pub. 1973), trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975).Google Scholar

26 E.g., Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (orig. pub. 1972), trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977).Google Scholar

27 E.g., Bourdieu, Pierre, Outline of a Theory of Practice (orig. pub. 1972), trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977).Google Scholar

28 E.g., Giddens, Anthony, The Constitution of Society: Outline of a Theory of Structuration (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984) (“Giddens, Constitution of Society”). Google Scholar

29 E.g., Peter L. Berger & Luckmann, Thomas, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (orig. pub. 1966) (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1967) (“Berger & Luckmann, Social Construction of Reality”); see also Hunter, James Davison & Ainlay, Stephen C., eds., Making Sense of Modern Times: Peter L. Berger and the Vision of Interpretive Sociology (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986).Google Scholar

30 E.g., Goffman, Erving, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1959); id., Behavior in Public Places: Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings (New York: Free Press, 1963) (“Goffman, Behavior in Public Places”). Google Scholar

31 The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein speaks of the “craving for generality” in science as a “contemptuous attitude toward the particular case.”“The Blue Book,” in The Blue and Brown Books 17-18 (orig. pub. 1958) (New York: Harper & Row, 1965). However appropriate for scientists it might be, he regards generality as an inappropriate preoccupation for philosophers. Id. See also Monk, Ray, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius 338, 449 (New York: Free Press, 1990).Google Scholar

32 For pertinent evidence, see respectively Linda S. Williams, “The Classic Rape: When Do Victims Report?” 31 Soc. Prob. 459 (1984); Block, Richard, “Why Notify the Police: The Victim's Decision to Notify the Police of an Assault,” 11 Criminology 555 (1974); Black, Donald, “The Social Organization of Arrest,” 23 Stan. L. Rev. 1097–98 (1971); Vera Institute of Justice, Felony Arrests: Their Prosecution and Disposition in New York City's Courts 23-52 (New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 1977); Holmstrom, Lynda Lytle & Burgess, Ann Wolbert, The Victim of Rape: Institutional Reactions 246-47 (orig. pub. 1978) (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1983).Google Scholar

33 See, respectively, David M. Engel, “The Oven Bird's Song: Insiders, Outsiders, and Personal Injuries in an American Community,” 18 Law & Soc'y Rev. 551 (1984); Macaulay, Stewart, Won-contractual Relations in Business: A Preliminary Study,” 28 Am. Soc. Rev. 55 (1963).Google Scholar

34 For a typology of third parties and details on various amounts of intervention, see Black, Donald & Baumgartner, M. P., “Toward a Theory of the Third Party” (orig. pub. 1983), in Black, Right and Wrong 95–124 (cited in note 1) (“Black & Baumgartner, ‘Theory of the Third Party’”). See also Black, id., chs. 7-8. The authoritativeness of third parties includes their degree of formalism (use of rules), decisiveness (one-sidedness), coerciveness (use of force), and punitiveness (use of pain and deprivation as a remedy). Id. at 145–49. The partisanship of third parties refers to their degree of support for one side of a conflict against the other. Black & Baumgartner, id. at 98.Google Scholar

35 As noted earlier, the association between law and relational distance is curvilinear, declining at both the smallest distances (such as within families) and the greatest distances (such as between societies). The same applies to the relationship between law and cultural distance and law and differentiation (functional interdependence). As indicated in the text above, however, the intervention of third parties obeys a linear principle. The most intervention is predicted between people who are the most distant (culturally as well as relationally) and the most independent, while the least is predicted between those who are the closest and most interdependent. See also the formulations pertaining to therapy and conciliation in Black, Behavior of Law 29–30, 47–48, 78–79, 98–99.Google Scholar

36 Other degrees of authoritativeness are identifiable as well: A friendly peacemaker does not address the substance of the conflict, but merely intervenes in a positive fashion, such as by stepping between the parties and making a joke. See Black & Baumgartner, “Theory of the Third Party,” at 108–10. A repressive peacemaker does not address the substance of the conflict either, but instead handles it as an offense in itself, such as by punishing both parties. Id. at 116-17. On the continuum of authoritativeness, friendly pacification lies between therapy and mediation, while repressive pacification lies beyond adjudication. The former should therefore be most likely to occur when the adversaries are highly intimate, such as close friends or relatives, while the latter should be most likely to occur when the adversaries are extremely distant, such as different tribes or societies. Repressive pacification may also occur when the third party has no information about the social relationship between the adversaries.Google Scholar

The Black & Baumgartner typology does not place therapy directly on the continuum of authoritativeness, but classifies it separately as a mode of intervention not explicitly concerned with conflict at all. Id. at 98, 119–21; see also Black, “Social Control,” at 9–10, 15–16 (cited in note 1).Google Scholar

37 See id., Behavior of Law 47; Horwitz, Allan V., The Logic of Social Control 81–83 (New York: Plenum Press, 1990) (“Horwitz, Social Control”); but compare id., The Social Control of Mental Illness 35–47 (New York: Academic Press, 1982) (“Horwitz, Mental Illness”). Self-intimacy is variable and measurable in the same fashion as intimacy between people: The more time people spend with themselves, for example, the greater is their intimacy with themselves. The greater the scope of activities in which they participate with themselves—alone—the greater is their self-intimacy as well. On the measurement of relational distance, see Black, , Behavior of Law 40-41. In modem America, for instance, people who live alone are more likely to receive psychiatric care—a pattern consistent with the positive relationship between therapy and self-intimacy. See, e.g., Dinitz, Simon, Lefton, Mark, Angrist, Shirley, & Pasamanick, Benjamin, “Psychiatric and Social Attributes as Predictors of Case Outcome in Mental Hospitalization,” 8 Soc. Prob. 327 (1961); see also Black, Behavior of Law 119–20. In the Western world, moreover, the social structure of the self has been changing: People have become increasingly intimate with themselves. Various forms of psychotherapy—including self-therapy—have therefore proliferated. Compare Honwitz, Mental Illness ch. 8; id., “Therapy and Social Solidarity,” in Black, Donald, ed., Toward a General Theory of Social Control, vol. 1: Fundamentals 211 (Orlando, Fla.: Academic Press, 1984); Giddens, Anthony, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age 70–74, 185–87 (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991) (“Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity”). Self-intimacy increases self-attention of all kinds. In this sense, the self is a quantitative variable, and historically its magnitude has grown. Compare, e.g., Elias, Norbert, The Civilizing Process, vol. 1: The Development of Manners 190-91, 245-63 (orig. pub. 1939), trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York: Urizen Books, 1978) (“Elias, Manners”); Trilling, Lionel, Sincerity and Authenticity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972); Berger, Peter L., Berger, Brigitte, & Kellner, Hansfried, The Homeless Mind: Modernization and Consciousness 83–96 (New York: Vintage Books, 1973); Taylor, Charles, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989); Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity. Google Scholar

38 By “inequality” and “Superiority” I refer to differences in various dimensions of social status, such as wealth, integration, conventionality, and respectability. For an explication of these and other pertinent variables, see generally Black, Behavior of Law chs. 2–6.Google Scholar

39 Id., Right and Wrong 144.Google Scholar

40 If little or no intimacy exists at the beginning of a therapeutic or mediation relationship, it normally develops as the relationship with the therapist or mediator evolves—more so in the former than the latter, and more so in both than in a relationship with an arbitrator or judge.Google Scholar

41 Since the relational distances between the third party and the adversaries and between the adversaries themselves vary together, the authoritativeness of the intervention is a direct function of the area of the triangle formed by the distances between the three. Compare Black & Baumgartner, “Theory of the Third Party,” at 123; Black, “Social Control,” at 15-16. The relational distance between the adversaries and their partisans also varies directly with the relational distance between the adversaries: Closer adversaries tend to have closer partisans than more distant adversaries. As noted below, a greater degree of closeness to either adversary is associated with partisanship itself.Google Scholar

42 Id., Right and Wrong 127.Google Scholar

43 Id. at 134-35. See also Black & Baumgartner, “Theory of the Third Parry,” at 123.Google Scholar

44 One (otherwise positive) critic seems to regard The Behavior of law, as too general: “It strikes me as sacrificing wisdom to elegance…. No doubt this is a matter of taste, but I am more enlightened by theories less abstract than… Black's.” R. Stephen Warner, “What Should We Be Doing?” 9 Perspectives 9 (1986) (Newsletter of the American Sociological Association's Theory Division). But the abstraction of science inheres in its generality, and if a formulation orders the facts as well or better than anything else, it cannot be too general. We do not criticize Newton or Einstein for being too general or abstract. But a formulation that overstates its empirical jurisdiction (the facts to which it applies) is subject to criticism as an overgeneralization. And a formulation that understates its theoretical jurisdiction (the theory of which it is an implication) is subject to criticism as well—as an undergeneralization. An example of an undergeneralization would be an explanation of legal leniency in cases of domestic violence or acquaintance rape that focuses entirely on, say, the gender of the victim (usually female) or the particular society in which the leniency is observed (such as modem America), It would be an undergeneralization because the principle that law varies directly with relational distance orders not only the same facts as well or better, but also does so where the victim is male in legal life everywhere. (See my discussion of evidence in the section entitled “Is It True?” below.) The fields of anthropology and history contain many undergeneralizations.Google Scholar

I must add that science has nothing to do with “wisdom” or “enlightenment”—beyond the ordering of the facts. We therefore do not criticize Newton or Einstein for failing to provide wisdom or enlightenment about the physical universe. The fundamental meaning of reality—society, culture, life, the universe, or nature itself—is unknowable by science. See, e.g., Kolakowski, Leszek, The Alienation of Reason: A History of Positivist Thought 3-4 (orig. pub. 1966), trans. Norbert Guterman (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1968); see also Schneider, Mark A., Culture and Enchantment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).Google Scholar

45 Gell-Mann, Quark and Jaguar ch. 7 (cited in note 12).Google Scholar

46 Id. at 28.Google Scholar

47 Id. at 30–34.Google Scholar

48 Id. at 77, paraphrasing Stephen Wolfram.Google Scholar

49 Burtt, Edwin Arthur, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science 38 (italics omitted) (orig. pub. 1952) (rev. ed. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1954) (“Burtt, Metaphysical Foundations”). Google Scholar

50 Id. at 51; see also Mason, Stephen F., A History of the Sciences ch. 3 & p. 46 (orig. pub. 1956) (rev. ed. New York: Collier Books, 1962) (“Mason, History of Sciences”); Kuhn, Thomas S., The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought 168-72 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957) (“Kuhn, Copernican Revolution”). Google Scholar

51 Crick, Francis, What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery 6 (New York: Basic Books, 1988) (“Crick, Mad Pursuit”). He also expresses pessimism abut the degree to which biological phenomena are susceptible to simplification. Id., ch. 13. Whether any aspect of reality can be simplified, however, is matter of faith, not fact. And the greatest scientists have the most faith.Google Scholar

52 Gell-Mann, Quark and Jaguar 17.Google Scholar

53 Howard E. Gruber, “Darwin's ‘Tree of Nature’ and Other Images of Wide Scope,” in Wechsler, Judith, ed., On Aesthetics in Science 123 (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1978) (“Wechsler, Aesthetics in Science”). To return to Copernicus, for example:Google Scholar

As Copernicus himself recognized, the real appeal of sun-centered astronomy was aesthetic rather than pragmatic. To astronomers the initial choice between Copernicus' system and Ptolemy's could only be a matter of taste, and matters of taste are the most difficult to define or debate. Yet, as the Copernican Revolution itself indicates, matters of taste are not negligible. The ear equipped to discern geometric harmony could detect a new nearness and coherence in the sun-centered astronomy of Copernicus, and if that neatness and coherence had not been recognized, there might have been no Revolution.Google Scholar

Kuhn, Copernican Revolution 171. But Gruber also suggests that nature can be beautiful because of the “spectacle of complexity” and “wildness” it presents, and even that an “erotic strain in science” is associated with this dimension of nature. He proposes that such a strain is noticeable, for example, in the work of Charles Darwin. Gruber at 123–24, 133–35.Google Scholar

54 The reverse applies as well: The English painter Francis Bacon thus sounds like a theoretical scientist when he suggests that important paintings “abbreviate” reality to achieve a “sophisticated simplicity.”Quoted in Sylvester, David, The Brutality of Fact: Interviews with Francis Bacon 176 (orig. pub. 1975) (3d enlarged ed. New York: Thames & Hudson, 1988). Also: “One constructs an artificial structure by which one can trap the reality of the subject-matter.”Id. at 180. Some artists speak of a search for truth as well. The Italian-Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti, for example, often said that “what interested him was not art but truth,” that “it was by means of style that works of art attain truth,” and that “truth alone was of enduring consequence.” Lord, James, Giacometti: A Biography 99, 518; see also 307 (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1985). And the Spanish painter Salvador Dalf spoke of his own work as “a raw and bloody hunk of truth.” Dalf, Salvador, Diary of a Genius 125 (orig. pub. 1964), trans. Richard Howard (New York: Prentice Hall Press, 1965) (“Dalf, Diary”). Google Scholar

55 His general theory of relativity, for example, provides a model of gravitation in an equation of nine notations. See Gell-Mann, Quark and Jaguar 87-88 (cited in note 12). His theory of the equivalence of energy and mass is even shorter: E = mc 2.Google Scholar

56 Banesh Hoffmann (with the collaboration of Helen Dukas), Albert Einstein: Creator and Rebel 3 (New York: Viking Press, 1972). See also 18 & 176 (“Hoffmann, Albert Einstein”). Google Scholar

57 H. A. Einstein, quoted in Whitrow, G. J., ed., Einstein: The Man and His Achievement 19 (New York: Dover, 1967) (“Whitrow, Einstein”). Google Scholar

58 Id. Google Scholar

59 Bondi, Hermann, quoted in id. at 82.Google Scholar

60 John Schwarz (co-founder of superstring theory), quoted in Kaku, Michio & Trainer, Jennifer, Beyond Einstein: The Cosmic Quest for the Theory of the Universe 195 (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1987) (“Kaku & Trainer, Beyond Einstein”). Another respected physicist, Hermann Weyl, once remarked that he chose beauty over the existing evidence to guide his scientific beliefs: “My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful; but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful.”Quoted in Chandrasekhar, S., Truth and Beauty: Aesthetics and Motivations in Science 65 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). And Weyl's instincts were good. In one case, for example, his aesthetically based formulation was ultimately confirmed after being “ignored” by the physics community for “some 30 years.”Id. at 66. See also generally Wechsler, Aesthetics in Science; Cole, K. C., Sympathetic Vibrations: Reflections on Physics as a Way of Life ch. 10 (orig. pub. 1984) (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1985).Google Scholar

61 Keats, John, “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” in Coleman, Elliott, ed., Poems of Byron, Keats and Shelley 413 (orig. pub. 1819) (Garden City, N.Y.: International Collectors Library, 1967).Google Scholar

62 Durkheim, Division of Labor (cited in note 18).Google Scholar

63 Since my formulations apply to the handling of all cases, criminal and civil, at all stages of the legal process, across societies and history (including evolutionary patterns), they are, for example, vastly more general than Durkheim's proposition about the evolution of legal remedies.Google Scholar

64 E.g., Parsons, Social System (cited in note 1).Google Scholar

65 E.g., Luhmann, Theory of Law (cited in note 24).Google Scholar

66 E.g., Giddens, Constitution of Society (cited in note 28).Google Scholar

67 Thomas J. Bernard, “The Black Hole: Sources of Confusion for Criminologists in Black's Theory” 9 (presented at annual meeting of American Society of Criminology, Miami, Fla., Nov. 1994).Google Scholar

68 If my formulations are correct, however, it might be said that law itself is beautiful.Google Scholar

69 One exception would be an untestable theory that includes an important innovation of a conceptual nature—a new way of looking at reality. It might raise the level of generality at which aspects of reality are conceived, for example, or it might identify aspects of reality previously unknown. Talcott Parsons thus raised the level of generality of sociological discourse, while Erving Goffman identified various features of face-to-face interaction largely unrecognized before his work. Yet their writings yield few testable formulations or implications. See, e.g., Parsons, Social System; Goffman. Behavior in Public Places (cited in note 30).Google Scholar

70 The philosopher Francis Bacon long ago remarked that ‘Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.”Novum Organum (orig. pub. 1620), quoted in Kuhn, Scientific Revolutions 18 (cited in note 4).Google Scholar

71 Pauli, Wolfgang, quoted in Ed Regis, Who Got Einstein's Office? Eccentricity and Genius at the Institute for Advanced Study 195 (Reading, Mass.: Addison Wesley, 1987) (“Regis, Einstein's Office”). Google Scholar

Ludwig Wittgenstein effectively suggests that mast of philosophy is “not even wrong”: “Most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical works are not false but nonsensical. Consequently we cannot give any answer to questions of this kind, but can only point out that they are nonsensical.” Wittgenstein, Tractatus 37 (cited in note 5).Google Scholar

72 See, e.g., Richard D. Schwartz & James C. Miller, “Legal Evolution and Societal Complexity,” 70 Am. J. Soc. 159 (1964); Spitzer, Stephen, “Punishment and Social Organization: A Study of Durkheim's Theory of Penal Evolution,” 9 Law & Soc'y Rev. 613 (1975). In fact, Durkheim was doubly wrong: The simplest societies are not only less penal but also less compensatory than more complex societies. See Black, Donald, “Compensation and the Social Structure of Misfortune” (orig. pub. 1987), in id., Right and Wrong 62 n.6 (“Black, ‘Compensation’“). Conflicts in the simplest societies are more commonly handled in a conciliatory style. Avoidance—a curtailment of interaction between the adversaries—is frequent as well. Without adequate anthropological evidence, Durkheim relied primarily on available information about Australian Aborigines, an unusual case of a simple society where the violation of taboos reportedly might result in capital punishment. See, e.g., Warner, W. Lloyd, A Black Civilization: A Social Study of an Australian Tribe (orig. pub. 1937) (rev. ed. New York: Harper, 1958); M. J. Meggitt, Desert People: A Study of the Walbiri Aborigines of Central Australia (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1962).Google Scholar

73 Another model was anthropologist Max Gluckman's proposition that the conciliatory style of law is more likely when a conflict occurs in a “multiplex”—multi-stranded— relationship (such as a marital relationship) than in a single-stranded relationship (such as a relationship that is exclusively economic). Gluckman, Max, The Judicial Process among the Barotse of Northern Rhodesia 19-21 (orig. pub. 1955) (2d ed. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1967). See also id., “African Jurisprudence,” 75 Advancement of Science 443–44 (1962). But I later subsumed Gluckman's proposition in a more general formulation: Remedial law varies inversely with relational distance (where “remedial” refers to both conciliatory and therapeutic styles and “relational distance” refers to various dimensions of intimacy, including the multiplexity of a relationship. Black, , Behavior of Law 47–48. His proposition is therefore obsolete.Google Scholar

74 See generally Black, Behavior of Law. Google Scholar

75 Henry P. Lundsgaarde, Murder in Space City: A Cultural Analysis of Houston Homicide Pattern 90–92, 224–29, 232 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977).Google Scholar

76 See, e.g., the studies on criminal and civil justice cited earlier in the section entitled “Is It General ?”Google Scholar

77 In the ancient Code of Manu (compiled sometime between the third century B.C. and the third century A.D.), for example, the fine for stealing crops such as fruits and vegetables is halved in cases where the thief and the victim have a “connexion.”The Laws of Manu ch. 8, sec. 331, p. 312 (orig. pub. 1886), trans. Georg Bühler (New York: Dover, 1969). On the Code's origin, see Lingat, Robert, The Classical Law of India 87-96 (orig. pub. 1967), trans. J. Duncan M. Derrett (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973).Google Scholar

78 The punishment for theft outside the family is more severe than for theft within the family, for example, and is “graduated inversely to the closeness of relationship” within a family. Derk Bodde & Clarence Morris, Law in Imperial China: Exemplified by 190 Ch'ing Dynasty Cases, with Historical, Social, and Juridical Commentaries 38 (italics omitted) (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967); T'ung-tsu Ch'u, Law and Society in Traditional China 67–68 (Paris: Mouton, 1961). In cases within the family, the thief was also exempted from the usual practice of having the offense tattooed on his forearm and (for repeat offenders) face. Id. at 68. For more details on tattooing, see Bodde, & Morris, , id. at 96–97.Google Scholar

79 In 14th-century England, for example, juries were twice as likely to convict strangers as local residents, and strangers accused of theft were “almost sure” to be convicted. Hanawalt, Barbara A., Crime and Conflict in English Communities, 1300-1348 at 54 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979).Google Scholar

80 Among the Arusha of colonial Tanganyika (now part of Tanzania), for example, people who lived “more than a few miles apart” and those who were “distantly linked patrilineally” were more likely to litigate their disputes. P. H. Gulliver, Social Control in an African Society: A Study of the Arusha, Agricultural Masai of Northern Tanganyika 204 (italics omitted); see also 205–6 (Boston: Boston University Press, 1963).Google Scholar

81 For instance, litigation between Japanese who live in different villages is more likely than litigation between those who live in the same village. Takeyoshi Kawashima, “Dispute Resolution in Contemporary Japan,”in von Mehren, Arthur T., ed., Law in Japan: The Legal Order of a Changing Society 43–45 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963).Google Scholar

82 Other evidence is cited in M. P. Baumgartner, “The Myth of Discretion,” in Hawkins, Keith, ed., The Uses Of Discretion 131–36 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993) (“Baumgartner, ‘Myth of Discretion’“); see also Black, Behavior of Law 40–46.Google Scholar

83 See, e.g., Collier, Jane Fishbume, Law and Social Change in Zinacantan 55–57 (Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press, 1973); Just, Peter, “Conflict Resolution and Moral Community among the Dou Donggo,” in Kevin Avruch, Peter W. Black, & Joseph A. Scimecca, eds., Conflict Resolution: Cross-cultural Perspectives 109 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1991).Google Scholar

84 See. e.g., John Middleton & David Tait, eds., Tribes without Rulers: Studies in African Segmentary Systems (orig. pub. 1958) (New York: Humanities Press, 1970); Gluckman, Max, Politics, Law and Ritual in Tribal Society ch. 3 (New York: New American Library, 1965); Roberts, Simon, Order and Dispute: An Introduction to Legal Anthropology (New York: Penguin Books, 1979).Google Scholar

85 Glashow, Interactions 51 (cited in note 19).Google Scholar

86 See Gell-Mann, Quark and Jaguar 90-91 (cited in note 12).Google Scholar

87 See, e.g., Frankford, 20 Law & Soc. Inquiry (cited in note 2); Warner, 9 Perspectives (cited in note 44).Google Scholar

88 Explicit tests, applications, and extensions of my work are increasingly available as well. See, for example (in alphabetical order), Baumgartner, M. P., “Law and Social Status in Colonial New Haven, 1639-1665,”in Simon, Rita J., ed., Research in Law and Sociology: An Annual Compilation of Research 153 (Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1978); Baumgartner, , “Law and the Middle Class: Evidence from a Suburban Town,”9 Law & Hum. Behav. 3 (1985); id., The Moral Order of a Suburb (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988) (“Baumgartner, Moral Order of a Suburb”); id., “Myth of Discretion”; Marian J. Borg, “Conflict Management in the Modem World-System,” 7 Soc. Forum 261 (1992); Cooney, Mark, “Evidence as Partisanship,” 28 Law & Soc'y Rev. 833 (1994); Griffiths, , “Division of Labor in Social Control” (cited in note 17); Horwitz, Mental Illness and Social Control (both cited in note 37); Kruttschnitt, Candace, “Social Status and the Sentences of Female Offenders,” 15 Law & Soc'y Rev. 247 (1980-81); id., “Women, Crime and Dependency: An Application of the Theory of Law,” 19 Criminology 495 (1982); Morrill, Calvin, “The Management of Managers: Disputing in an Executive Hierarchy,” 4 Soc. Forum 387 (1989); id., “Vengeance among Executives,”in Tucker, James, ed., Virginia Review of Sociology, vol. 1: Law and Conflict Management 51 (Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1992); id., The Executive Way: Conflict Management in Corporations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Mullis, Jeffery, “Medical Malpractice, Social Structure, and Social Control,” 10 Soc. Forum 135 (1995); Radelet, Michael L., “Executions of Whites for Crimes against Blacks: Exceptions to the Rule?” 30 Soc. Q. 529 (1989); Rigoli, Robert M., Miracle, Andrew W Jr., & Poole, Eric D., “Law and Social Control in China: An Application of Black's Thesis,” 9 Criminal Just. Rev. 1 (1984); de la Roche, Roberta Senechal, “Collective Violence as Social Control,” 11 Soc. Forum (forthcoming, 1996); id., “The Sociogenesis of Lynching,”in Brundage, W. Fitzhugh, ed., Lynching in the South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, forthcoming) (“Senechal de la Roche, ‘Sociogenesis of Lynching’”); Silberman, Matthew, The Civil Process: A Detroit Area Study (Orlando, Fla.: Academic Press, 1985); Staples, William G., “Law and Social Control in Juvenile Justice,” 24 J. Research Crime & Delinq. 7 (1987); Tucker, James, “Employee Theft as Social Control,” 10 Deoiant Behau. 319 (1989).Google Scholar

89 Crick, Mad Pursuit 73–74 (cited in note 51).Google Scholar

90 Pais, Abraham, Einstein Lived Here 140 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994) (“Pais, Einstein Lived Here”); see also Bernstein, Jeremy, Einstein 102 (New York: Viking Press, 1973) (“Bernstein, Einstein”). Google Scholar

91 Pais, Einstein Lived Here 70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

92 Kaku & Trainer, Beyond Einstein 34 (cited in note 60). In 1965, physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer noted that the general theory of relativity was still “not well proved experimentally.” J. Robert Oppenheimer, “On Albert Einstein,”in French, A. P., ed. Einstein: A Centenary Volume 44 (Cambridge: Harvard university Press, 1979); see also Sciama, D. W., in Whitrow, Einstein 40 (cited in note 57).Google Scholar

93 Crick, Mad Pursuit 60, paraphrasing James Watson.Google Scholar

94 Here again science resembles art, but only modem art. Modem artists—the successful ones—often speak of their preoccupation with new ideas. When excited by his own originality, for example, Salvador Dalí wrote of having an “intellectual erection.” Dalí, Diary 139 (cited in note 54). On the other hand, the English painter Francis Bacon once described himself as “absolutely castrated” when he found himself bereft of inspiration after moving to a new and more comfortable studio. He therefore returned to his old and squalid studio, where he remained the rest of his life. Sinclair, Andrew, Francis Bacon: His Life and Violent Times 251 (New York: Crown, 1993) (“Sinclair, Francis Bacon”). Google Scholar

95 Speaking of modem painting (and particularly the work of the American Jackson Pollock), art critic Clement Greenberg once remarked that “All profoundly original art looks ugly at first.” Potter, Jeffrey, To a Violent Grave: An Oral Biography of Jackson Pollock 80 (orig. pub. 1985) (Wainscott, N.Y.: Pushcart Press, 1987). Francis Bacon “used to say that he liked his paintings being called ugly” and “was much more pleased when some people really hated his paintings than when they liked them. There might, after all, in that case, be something there.” Sinclair, Francis Bacon 250. Likewise, sociological work that does not upset anyone probably is not very important.Google Scholar

96 See, e.g., Frankford, 20 Law & Soc. Inquiry (cited in note 2).Google Scholar

97 Kuhn, Thomas, a historian of science, argues that the major changes in the history of science—“scientific revolutions”—have been changes in paradigms. See generally Kuhn, Scientific Revolutions (cited in note 4).Google Scholar

98 Durkheim, Emile, The Rules of Sociological Method (orig. pub. 1895), trans. Sarah A. Solovay & John H. Mueller (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938) (“Durkheim, The Rules”). Google Scholar

99 See George C. Homans, “Contemporary Theory in Sociology,” in Faris, Robert E. L., ed., Handbook of Modern Sociology 970–71 (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1964).Google Scholar

100 He speaks of “social facts” as, for example, “ways of acting, thinking, and feeling, external to the individual, and endowed with a power of coercion, by reason of which they control him.” Durkheim, The Rules 3.Google Scholar

101 See, respectively, Durkheim, Emile, Suicide: A Study in Sociology (orig. pub. 1897), trans. John A. Spaulding & George Simpson (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1951); id., Moral Education: A Study in the Theory and Application of the Sociology of Education (orig. pub. 1925), trans. Everett K. Wilson & Herman Schnurer (New York: Free Press, 1961); id., Professional Ethics and Civic Morals (orig. pub. 1950), trans. Cornelia Brookfield (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1958); id., The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (orig. pub. 1912), trans. Joseph Ward Swain (New York: Collier Books, 1961) (“Durkheim, Religious Life”). Google Scholar

102 E.g., Weber, Theory of Social and Economic Organization esp. pts. 1, 3 (cited in note 21); id., The Protestant Ethic and the Sprint of Capitalism (orig. pub. 1904-5), trans. Talcott Parsons (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958) (“Weber, Protestant Ethic”). Google Scholar

103 E.g., Marx & Engels, Baric Writings (cited in note 20).Google Scholar

104 E.g., Simmel, Sociology esp. pt. 4 (cited in note 22); Poggi, Gianfranco, Money and the Modem Mind: Georg Simmel's “Philosophy of Money” (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).Google Scholar

105 Parsons, Talcott, The Structure of Social Action: A Study in Social Theory (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1937).Google Scholar

106 Berger & Luckmann, Social Construction of Reality (cited in note 29).Google Scholar

107 James S. Coleman, Foundations of Social Theory (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990).Google Scholar

108 George C. Homans, “Bringing Men Back In,” 29 Am. Soc. Rev. 809 (1964); id., The Nature of Social Science chs. 2-3 (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967) (“Homans, Social Science”). CrossRefGoogle Scholar

109 Homans (in Social Science at 63) does not argue that sociology without psychology is impossible, but only that it seems unlikely to occur:Google Scholar

It is conceivable that at some time in the future—perhaps tomorrow morning—a sociological proposition will be discovered that is general, insofar as it applies to all social groups and aggregates, that has great power in explaining social phenomena, and that cannot itself be derived from psychological propositions. If it were discovered, all argument would fall down before the fact. I am certainly not against sociologists' trying to discover such a proposition, and I can find no line of reasoning that will demonstrate, before the fact, that it will not be discovered. I just do not believe, extrapolating from past experience, that this is going to happen—but the future is a long time.Google Scholar

110 But see Mayhew, Bruce H., “Structuralism versus Individualism: Part I, Shadowboxing in the Dark,” 59 Soc. Forces 335 (1980); id., “Structuralism versus Individualism: Part II, Ideological and Other Obfuscation,” 59 Soc. Forces 627 (1981).Google Scholar

111 See Black, “Pure Sociology” (cited in note 5).Google Scholar

112 The Surrealist painter Salvador Dalf described a similar relationship with his fellow Surrealists: “I was such a conscientious student of Surrealism that … I was finally expelled from the group because I was too Surrealist.” Dalf, Diary 10 (cited in note 54). He also frequently remarked that “The only difference between the Surrealists and me is that I am a Surrealist.”Quoted in Gilles Néret, Salvador Dalí: 1904-1989 at 55, trans. Catherine Plant (Cologne: Benedikt Taschen, 1994) (“Néret, Dalí”). Likewise, the only difference between most sociologists and me is that I am a sociologist.Google Scholar

113 This applies not only to those with advanced training in sociology, but also to anyone else who participates in the creation or evaluation of sociological discourse. See, e.g., Frankford, 20 Law d Soc. Inquiry (cited in note 2).Google Scholar

114 See below, “Epistemological Shock.”Google Scholar

115 For an elaboration, see Black, , “Pure Sociology.” See also id., Behavior of Law (cited in note 8). For a different conception of social space, see Bourdieu, Pierre, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste esp. pt. 2 (orig. pub. 1979), trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984) (“Bourdieu, Distinction”); id., “Social Space and Symbolic Power” (orig. pub. 1987), trans. Loïc J. D. Wacquant, J Soc. Theory 14 (1989). Bourdieu speaks of various fields of social activity as social spaces—-political space, economic space, religious space, juridical space, scientific space, the space of sports, the space of arts, etc.: “In highly differentiated societies, the social cosmos is made up of a number of … relatively autonomous social microcosms, i.e., spaces of objective relations.” Pierre Bourdieu & Loïc J. D. Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology 97 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992): see also id. at 93–94: Bourdieu. Distinction 451-53: id., “The Force of Law: Toward a Sociology of the Juridical Field” (orig. pub. 1986), trans. Richard Terdiman, 38 Hastings L.J. 816. 828 (1987).Google Scholar

Georg Simmel also uses geometrical concepts. See, e.g., Simmel, Sociology (cited in note 22). See also Walter, E. V., “Simmel's Sociology of Power: The Architecture of Politics,” in Wolff, Kurt H., ed., Essays on Sociology, Philosophy ad Aesthetics 152–55 (orig. pub. 1959 as Georg Simmel, 1858–1918) (New York: Harper & Row, 1965). And see Pepinsky, Harold E., The Geometry of Violence and Democracy chs. 3, 5 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991). On the varieties of space and the use of geometry in physics, see Hofstadter, Douglas R., Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid 456-57 (New York: Basic Books, 1979). On the use of geometry in science more generally, see Hempel, Carl G., “Geometry and Empirical Science,” 52 Am. Mathematical Monthly 7 (1945).Google Scholar

116 See, e.g., S. D. Berkowitz, An Introduction to Structural Analysis: The Network Approach to Social Research (Toronto: Butterworths, 1982).Google Scholar

117 See especially Black, Behavior of Law. Google Scholar

118 See generally K. Knorr-Cetina & A. V. Cicourel, eds., Advances in Social Theory and Methodology: Toward an integration of Micro- and Macro-Sociologies (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981); Collins, Randall, “On the Microfoundations of Macrosociology,” 80 Am. J. Soc. 984 (1981); id., Theoretical Sociology ch. 11 (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988); Jeffrey C. Alexander, Bernard Giesen, Richard Münch, & Neil J. Smelser, eds., The Micro-Macro Link (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987); Fuchs, Stephan, “On the Microfoundations of Macrosociology: A Critique of Macrosociological Reductionism,” 32 Soc. Perspectives 169 (1989); Turner, Jonathan H., The Structure of Sociological Theory ch. 32 (orig. pub. 1974) (5th ed. Belmont, Cal.: Wadsworth, 1991) (“Turner, Sociological Theory”). Google Scholar

Some units of analysis may not be small enough to qualify as microcosms or large enough to qualify as macrocosms. Examples are organizations such as firms and universities and domains of social activity such as sciences and sports.Google Scholar

119 See, e.g., Mayhew, Leon H., Law and Equal Opportunity: A Study of the Massachusetts Commission against Discrimination (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968); Nader, Laura, ed., Law in Culture and Society (Chicago: Aldine, 1969); Haley, John Owen, “The Myth of the Reluctant Litigant,” 4 J. Japanese Stud. 359 (1978); id., Authority without Power: Law and the Japanese Paradox (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); Kagan, Richard L., Lawsuits and Litigation in Castile, 1500-1700 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981); Lieberman, Jethro K., The Litigious Society (New York: Basic Books, 1981); Geertz, Clifford, “Local Knowledge: Fact and Law in Comparative Perspective,” in id., Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology 167 (New York: Basic Books, 1983); Friedman, Lawrence M., Total Justice (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1985); Merry, Sally Engle, Getting Justice and Getting Even: Legal Consciousness among Working-Class Americans (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).Google Scholar

120 Here and below I use “persons” and “societies” as shorthand references to any and all social microcosms and macrocosms.Google Scholar

121 The same applies to relatively stable patterns of human behavior, such as systems of social stratification and kinship, forms of religion and government, or styles of decoration and dance.Google Scholar

122 As implied above, the social structure of a conflict does not necessarily refer to the characteristics of a relationship between individuals. The parties might be families, clans, organizations, tribes, nations, or other formations in various combinations. Nor does it necessarily refer to a relationship in which the parties have direct contact, such as the contact involved in a criminal victimization or an accident. People might, for example, gossip or otherwise aggress against someone with whom they never have had or will have direct contact.Google Scholar

123 See Black, “Social Control,” at 14–19 (cited in note 1); id., Sociological Justice 7-8 (cited in note 9).Google Scholar

124 See generally id., Behavior of Law; id., Sociological Justice esp. ch. 1. My paradigm applies not only to variation in the quantity of law (the filing of a lawsuit, its success, the severity of a remedy, etc.) but also to variation in other elements of the legal process, including its style (penal, compensatory, conciliatory, etc.), system of liability (relative, strict, corporate, etc.), and procedures (degree of formalism, coerciveness, adversariness, etc.). On the theory of legal styles, see generally id., Behavior of Law; id., “Compensation” (cited in note 72); id., “Social Control,” at 6–9. On the theory of liability, see id., “Compensation.” On the theory of procedure, see id., Sociological Justice 91-94 (formalism); id., Right and Wrong 145-48 (formalism, decisiveness, and coerciveness); id., “Social Control of the Self” (orig. pub. 1992), in id., Right and Wrong 65-73 (adversariness); Baumgartner, , “Social Control from Below,” at 334-36 (cited in note 17) (procedural modes in general); Griffiths, “Division of Labor in Social Control” (cited in note 17) (differentiation); compare David Sciulli, “The Scope of Donald Black's Positivist Approach to Law and Social Control,” 20 Law & Soc. Inquiry 817–25 (1995).Google Scholar

125 Black, Donald, “The Elementary Forms of Conflict Management” (orig. pub. 1990), in id., Right and Wrong 74–79 (“Black, ‘Elementary Forms' “); id., Right and Wrong 144; see also Baumgartner, Moral Order of a Suburb (cited in note 88); Senechal de la Roche, 11 Soc. Forum, and id., “Sociogenesis of Lynching” (both cited in note 88).Google Scholar

126 See Black, Behavior of Law 29–30, 47–48, 78–79 (cited in note 8); Black & Baumgartner, “Theory of the Third Party,” at 122–23 (cited in note 34); Black, , “Elementary Forms,” at 83-88; id., Right and Wrong 144–49.Google Scholar

127 See Baumgartner, M. P., “Social Control in Suburbia,” in Black, Donald, ed., Toward a General Theory of Social Control, vol. 1: Selected Problems 79 (Orlando, Fla.: Academic Press, 1984); id., Moral Order of a Suburb chs. 3–4; Black, “Elementary Forms,” at 79–83.Google Scholar

128 See generally Horwitz, Mental Illness; see also id., Social Control ch. 5 (both cited in note 37).Google Scholar

129 As a form of social control, gossip is the handling of a grievance by an informal hearing in absentia—in the absence of the alleged offender. Black, “Elementary Forms,” at 86. Pure gossip is a final hearing of a case, preliminary gossip is a hearing that might lead to other social control, and postmortem gossip is a hearing after other social control. Pure gossip is most likely when the third parties and the alleged offender form an isosceles triangle of social distance (relational, cultural, and vertical), the third parties equidistant from the alleged offender. In addition, pure gossip varies directly with the social distance between the third parties and the alleged offender and inversely with the social distance between the third parties themselves. Gossipers thus tend to be intimate, homogeneous, and equal in social status, and they are most likely to gossip about those who are equally and maximally distant from both.Google Scholar

130 Feuding is a form of self-help, the handling of a grievance by aggression. The classic feud is an even exchange of killings over a period of time, each side keeping score and openly reciprocating each loss it suffers. The parties are groups such as clans, families, or gangs. A structural model of the classic feud includes the following elements: (1) intermediate relational distance between the parties (neither strangers nor close associates), (2) relational segmentation between the parties (divided by a social chasm, without cross-links), (3) functional independence of the parties (lack of division of labor), (4) solidarity of each party (intimate and homogeneous), (5) homogeneity between the parties (same ethnicity), and (6) equality between the parties (similar size and resources). For descriptions of the classic feud, see the literature cited in id., “Elementary Forms,” at 75. On the theory of self-help, see id. at 74–79. Narrow the distances in the model by reducing the relational separation and independence of the parties, and the reciprocity and continuity of the violence declines. Increase the distances (including cultural and vertical distances), and the violence becomes more indiscriminate and warlike.Google Scholar

131 See Senechal de la Roche, 11 Soc. Forum, and id., “Sociogenesis of Lynching.”Google Scholar

132 See id., 11 Soc. Forum. Google Scholar

133 For a comment on the social structure of war, see note 130 on feuding above. See also Black, “Elementary Forms,” at 75–78.Google Scholar

134 In modem societies such as the United States, a considerable amount of conduct defined as criminal involves the handling of conflict as well. To this degree, conflict structures of various kinds explain crime. See Black, Donald, “Crime as Social Control” (orig. pub. 1984), in id., Right and Wrong 27–46. For more examples of conflict structures, see generally id., Right and Wrong. Google Scholar

135 See id., “Pure Sociology,” at 168–69 (cited in note 5).Google Scholar

136 An idea is a statement about the nature of reality. Each idea is a quantitative variable, measurable by its degree of success—the truth and importance attributed to it in formal and informal modes of recognition such as publication, citation, and written or oral expressions of appreciation. The magnitude of an idea depends on the shape of social space where it occurs. In an earlier work, I introduce the theory of ideas and propose, for example, that the magnitude of an idea varies “inversely with the relational distance between its source and audience” and “directly with the status of its source and inversely with the status of its audience.”Id. at 166–67.Google Scholar

An implication is that, empirically speaking, a particular idea is neither true nor important in a universal or absolute sense, but rather varies in its truth and importance across various locations and directions in social space. We can thereby specify the structural relativity of truth and knowledge. Since my own social closeness and elevation are greater in relation to students in sociology than to professors of law, for example, my theory of ideas predicts that my theory of law will be more successful among the former than the latter. And it is. If and when law professors adopt and promulgate my theory of law, however, its recognition in law schools will increase.Google Scholar

137 A theory of explanatory behavior specifies the shape of social space where various theories occur. Thus, in sociology, deterministic theories—which explain human behavior with environmental forces—tend to be downward and distant in relation to the behavior explained, whereas voluntaristic theories—which explain human behavior as a free choice—tend to be lateral or upward and close. The crime of poor people is normally explained deterministically, for example, whereas white-collar crime by businesspeople, politicians, and professionals is normally explained voluntaristically. See, e.g., Kelly, Delos H., ed., Criminal Behavior: Text and Readings in Criminology pt. 3 (2d ed. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990); Geis, Gilbert, ed., White-Collar Criminal: The Offender in Business and the Professions pts. 2–3 (New York: Atherton Press, 1968).Google Scholar

138 God is, moreover, a quantitative variable: The more He intervenes in anything, the greater He is. He presently participates in various domains of Western life, for example, but His degree of participation has steadily declined since the Middle Ages. The philosopher Nietzsche thus spoke prematurely when he announced that “God is dead.” Nietzsche, Friedrich, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None, First Part (orig. pub. 1883), in Walter Kaufmann, ed./trans., The Portable Nietzsche 124 (New York: Viking Press, 1954) (“Kaufmann, Portable Nietzsche”). He has merely become less active. In this sense, religion itself—the supernatural dimension of social life—has declined. Because some sociologists measure religion with the participation of people in religious organizations or with beliefs reported in interviews rather than the participation of gods in human life (including disease, death, and disaster), they sometimes conclude that religion has not declined at all, or even that it has increased. For instance, Stark and Bainbridge primarily examine participation in religious organizations and argue that “the amount of religion remains relatively constant.” Stark, Rodney & Bainbridge, William Sims, The Future of Religion: Secularization, Revival and Cult Formation 3 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). See also Finke, Roger & Stark, Rodney, The Churching of America, 1776-1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy esp. ch. 1 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1992). For a similar argument based primarily on interviews, see, e.g., Daniel Bell, “Religion in the Sixties,” 38 Soc. Research 454–56 (1971). Bell also argues that because the human need for religion is constant, any decline in religion can only be temporary. Daniel Bell, “The Return of the Sacred? The Argument on the Future of Religion,” in The Winding Passage: Essays and Sociological Journeys, 1960-1980 at 346-54 (orig. pub. 1977) (Cambridge, Mass.: Abt Books, 1980).Google Scholar

139 Witchcraft, sorcery, the evil eye, love potions, and other forms of covert aggression and competition by supernatural means tend to be used by people who are relatively weak or unsuccessful—women in patriarchal societies, widows, spinsters, slaves, subordinates, poor people, social isolates, etc. Such people are more likely to be accused of supernatural misconduct as well. On witchcraft and sorcery, see, e.g., Colson, Elizabeth, The Makah Indians: A Study of an Indian Tribe in Modern American Society 225-28 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1953); Beattie, John, “Sorcery in Bunyoro,” in John Middleton & E. H. Winter, eds., Witchcraft and Sorcery in East Africa 30-32 (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1963); Balikci, Asen, The Netsilik Eskimo 175 (Garden City, N.Y.: Natural History Press, 1970); Thomas, Keith, “The Relevance of Social Anthropology to the Historical Study of English Witchcraft,” in Douglas, Mary, ed., Witchcraft Confessions and Accusations 59–64 (London: Tavistock, 1970); Midelfort, H. C. Erik, Witch Hunting in Southwestern Germany, 1562-1684: The Social and Intellectual Foundations 184-85 (Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press, 1972); Miller, William Ian, “Dreams, Prophesy and Sorcery: Blaming the Secret Offender in Medieval Iceland,” 58 Scandinavian Stud. 110-16 (1986). On the evil eye, see, e.g., Dundes, Alan, ed., The Evil Eye: A Casebook (orig. pub. 1981) (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992). On love potions, see, e.g., Bonnie B. Keller, “Marriage and Medicine: Women's Search for Love and Luck,” 26 African Soc. Research 489 (1978). See also generally Winans, Edgar V. & Edgerton, Robert B., “Hehe Magical Justice,” 66 Am. Anthropologist 745 (1964); Martin, Ruth, Witchcraft and the Inquisition in Venice: 1550-1650 esp. chs. 3, 6 (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1989). Those who outperform their rivals or otherwise enjoy success may also be suspected of supernatural practices. See, e.g., Kluckhohn, Clyde, Navajo Witchcraft 110–11, 119–20 (orig. pub. 1944) (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967); Jeanne Favret-Saada, Deadly Words: Witchcraft in the Bocage 135, 207 (orig. pub. 1977), trans. Catherine Cullen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980).Google Scholar

140 Gods and other spirits do not merely participate in the management of right and wrong, but also provide diverse services such as the restoration of health, protection from danger, economic prosperity, and a pleasant afterlife. These supernatural services obey principles of their own. For example, whereas supernatural aggression is comparatively unlikely between intimates, the opposite applies to supernatural help such as the restoration of health or protection from danger. See Black, Behavior of Law 56–58 (cited in note 8). More generally, religion is a direct function of social solidarity—relational and cultural closeness. Compare Durkheim, Religious Life (cited in note 101), where social solidarity is formulated as a direct function of religion. Religion also is a direct function of social stratification. It hardly exists among egalitarian hunter-gatherers, for example, but is highly developed and active in ancient civilizations with monarchs, aristocrats, commoners, and slaves.Google Scholar

141 Anthropologist Gregory Bateson refers to the selection of an inappropriate unit of analysis as an “epistemological error,” and notes that it may have practical as well as scientific implications. Gregory Bateson, “Pathologies of Epistemology” (orig. pub. 1971). in Steps to an Ecology of Mind 483–87 (New York: Ballantine Books, 1972). I suggest that all the traditional units of analysis in sociology are epistemologically mistaken. They weaken not only our ability to predict and explain social variation but also our ability to change the world for practical purposes. Those who wish to change the handling of legal cases, for example, must first recognize that the handling of the cases is associated with their location and direction in social space. See generally Black, Sociological Justice (cited in note 9). Those who wish to change the level of violence of any kind must similarly recognize the shape of social space from which it arises. They will have less success if they understand violence only as a product of particular people, societies, or other traditional units of analysis.Google Scholar

142 Burtt, Metaphysical Foundations 18 (cited in note 49).Google Scholar

143 Id. at 19.Google Scholar

144 Id. at 18.Google Scholar

145 Compare Elias, Manners 251–61 (cited in note 37).Google Scholar

146 By the behavior of furniture, clothing, and automobiles I refer to variation in their design.Google Scholar

147 Compare, for example, the claim of sociologist Randall Collins that only individuals can be “active agents” and that only individuals “do anything.” Collins, 80 Am. J. Soc. at 989 (italics in original) (cited in note 118). Sociologist Michael Hechter similarly asserts that “individuals do all the acting.”“Introduction,”in Hechter, Michael, ed., The Microfoundations of Macrosociology 4 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983).Google Scholar

148 See Black, “Pure Sociology,” at 164–65 (cited in note 5).Google Scholar

149 Praying to God is analogous to calling the police, especially when God is asked to provide help: The prayer increases God's involvement in a particular location and direction in social space—both where the prayer itself occurs and where He is asked to intervene (such as against a particular person who has allegedly victimized another person in a specific location and direction in social space). Just as a call to the police increases the involvement of law even if they do not exercise their authority when they arrive, so a prayer for help increases God's involvement even if He apparently does not comply or if His compliance is unknown.Google Scholar

150 Here again I mention only one example from a large number of principles I have formulated. For more illustrations, see generally id., Behavior of Law (cited in note 8); id., Sociological Justice (cited in note 9); and id., Right and Wrong (cited in note 1).Google Scholar

151 See generally Burtt, Metaphysical Foundations 18–19.Google Scholar

152 By “superparadigm” I refer to a master framework that underlies a number of different strategies of explanation, each of which is so fundamental that it qualifies as a paradigm in itself. See Kuhn, Scientific Revolutions 10 (cited in note 4). Among the paradigms in sociology are phenomenology, rational choice theory, Marxian and neo-Marxian theory, and functionalism. For examples of these and other strategies of explanation, see the references in the remaining footnotes of the present section.Google Scholar

153 E.g., Douglas, Jack D., The Social Meanings of Suicide (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1967); Katz, Jack, Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual Attractions of Doing Evil (New York: Basic Books, 1988).Google Scholar

154 E.g., Weber, Protestant Ethic (cited in note 102); Miller, Walter B., “Lower Class Culture as a Generating Milieu of Gang Delinquency,” 14 J. Soc. Issues 5 (1958).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

155 E.g., Mancur Olson, Jr., The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (New York: Schocken, 1968); Hechter, Michael, Principles of Group Solidarity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987) (“Hechter, Group Solidarity”). Google Scholar

156 E.g., White, Harrison C., Chains of Opportunity: System Models of Mobility in Organizations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970); Cohen, Lawrence E. & Felson, Marcus, “Social Change and Crime Rate Trends: A Routine Activity Approach,” 44 Am. Soc. Rev. 588 (1979).Google Scholar

157 E.g., Robert K. Merton, “Social Structure and Anomie,” 3 Am. Soc. Rev. 672 (1938); Ted Robert Gum, Why Men Rebel (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970).Google Scholar

158 E.g., Kingsley Davis & Wilbert E. Moore, “Some Principles of Stratification,” 10 Am. Soc. Rev. 242 (1945); Erikson, Kai T., Wayward Puritans: A Study in Sociology (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1966).Google Scholar

159 E.g., Marx & Engels, Basic Writings (cited in note 20); Collins, Randall, Conflict Sociology: Toward an Explanatory Science (New York: Academic Press, 1975).Google Scholar

160 See Black, Donald, “The Boundaries of Legal Sociology,” 81 Yale L.J. 1086 (1972).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

161 See, e.g., Hechter, Group Solidarity 184–85.Google Scholar

162 Nietzsche rejects teleology as a form of philosophy:Google Scholar

Man is not the effect of some special purpose, of a will, and end; nor is he the object of an attempt to attain an “ideal of humanity” or an “ideal of happiness” or an “ideal of morality.” It is absurd to wish to devolve one's essence on some end or other. We have invented the concept of “end”: in reality there is no end.Google Scholar

Nietzsche, Friedrich, Twilight of the Idols: Or, How One Philosophizes with a Hummer (orig. pub. 1889) in Kaufmann, Portable Nietzsche 500 (cited in note 138).Google Scholar

163 In one teleology of crime, for example, criminal behavior is “force or fraud undertaken in pursuit of self-interest” by people “lacking self-control.” Michael R. Gottfredson & Travis Hirschi, A General Theory of Crime xv, 5 (Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press, 1990).Google Scholar

164 Here I allude to Marxian and neo-Marxian explanations of law. See, e.g., Cain, Maureen & Hunt, Alan, eds., Marx and Engels on Law (London: Academic Press, 1979).Google Scholar

165 Functional explanations of law are teleological. See, e.g., Parsons, Talcott, “The Law and Social Control,”in Evan, William M., ed., Law and Sociology: Exploratory Essays 56 (New York: Free Press, 1962). To the degree that it is explanatory, the strategy of legal analysis known as “law-and-economics” is teleological as well. See, e.g., Richard A. Posner, “Utilitarianism, Economics, and Legal Theory,” 8 J. Legal Stud. 103 (1979). If goals, values, or purposes are imputed to society as a whole, law may be regarded as a more or less effective means to those goals, values, or purposes. See Black, Donald, “On Law and Institutionalization,” 40 Soc. Inquiry 179 (1970) (review of Mayhew, Leon H., Law and Equal Opportunity (cited in note 119)); Mayhew, Leon H., “Teleology and Values in the Social System: Reply to Donald Black,” 40 Soc. Inquiry 182 (1970). Any claim that law is effective or ineffective—if it carries the implication that law should or should not behave in a particular fashion—is value-laden. This includes, for example, any discussion of the gap between the law-in-theory and the law-in-action that suggests or implies that a gap should not exist. See Black, 81 Yale L.J. at 1086–91.Google Scholar

166 Moral discourse in everyday life is often teleological as well. Whether the gossip of neighbors and colleagues or the arguments in courtrooms and barrooms, the ends of people are continually imputed, inferred, examined, and evaluated. Even a seemingly good deed may be discredited as the devious pursuit of a selfish or otherwise unattractive end. Yet the end is always scientifically unknowable. If the scientific style of thought continues to proliferate, however, future generations may someday look back at today's teleological discourse with much the same dismay and amazement as those of the present look back at accusations of witchcraft and magic in earlier societies.Google Scholar

167 Kuhn, Scientific Revolutions 7 (cited in note 4). As noted earlier, Kuhn describes the adoption of a new paradigm as a scientific revolution. Id. at 10–11; see also generally id., chs. 2, 10.Google Scholar

168 Id. at 110. In this sense, a new paradigm is an invention of reality.Google Scholar

169 The shock occasionally induced by modem art, especially painting, is a close relative of epistemological shock. When Pablo Picasso was young and largely unknown, for example, his painting called Les Demoisell's d'Avignon (1907) shocked even close associates such as the French painter George Braque and the American writer Gertrude Stein. It has been said that “No painting ever looked more convulsive.” Robert Hughes, The Shock of the New 21 (orig. pub. 1980) (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991) (“Hughes, Shock of the New”). Word spread through Picasso's neighborhood that he had “gone mad.” But the poet Guillaume Apollinaire called the painting a “revolution.” Pierre Cabanne, Pablo Picasso: His Life and Times 119–20 (orig. pub. 1975), trans. Harold J. Salemson (New York: William Morrow, 1977). The paintings of Belgian Surrealist René Magritte have also been described as “disturbing” in much the same fashion as a scientific revolution: “Magritte's paintings are a systematic attempt to disrupt any dogmatic view of the physical world…. What happens in Magritte's paintings is, roughly speaking, the opposite of what the trained mind is accustomed to expect.” Suzi Gablik, Magritte 112, 114 (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1985). See also generally Hughes, Shock of the New. In science and scholarship, too, “trained minds” are more vulnerable to new conceptions of reality.Google Scholar

170 Even those astronomers who found Copernicus' book scientifically valuable typically regarded its central thesis of the earth's movement around the sun as unworthy of attention, absurd, or merely a useful but false assumption: “From the start the De Revoluotionibus was widely read, but it was read in spite of, rather than because of, its strange cosmological hypothesis.” Kuhn, Copernican Revolution 186 (cited in note 50).Google Scholar

171 Mason, History of Sciences 159–61 (cited in note 50); see also Burtt, Metaphysical Foundations ch. 2 (cited in note 49).Google Scholar

172 Although he was apparently executed for various heresies, not specifically for his support of Copernicus, “the Church feared Bruno's Copernicanism, and that fear may also have stimulated their reaction.” Kuhn, Copernican Revolution 199.Google Scholar

173 His retraction: “I Galileo, being in my seventieth year, being a prisoner and on my knees, and before your Eminences, having before my eyes the Holy Gospel, which I touch with my hands, abjure, curse, and detest the error and heresy of the movement of the earth.”(Quoted in Gruber, Howard E., Darwin on Ma: A Psychological Study of scientific Creativity 36-37 (orig. pub. 1974) (2d ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981) (“Gruber, Darwin on Man”). Google Scholar

174 Mason, History of Sciences 159–64; Pietro Redondi, Galileo: Heretic 260–61 (orig. pub. 1983), trans. Raymond Rosenthal (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987).Google Scholar

175 Gruber, Darwin on Man 12.Google Scholar

176 Id. Google Scholar

177 See generally id., ch. 4; Adrian Desmond & James Moore, Darwin, esp. chs. 32–34 (orig. pub. 1991) (New York: Warner Books, 1992). Many years after Darwin published his theory (in 1859), proponents of the theory still occasionally encountered hostility. In a famous case in 1925, for example, John Scopes was prosecuted, convicted, and fined $100 for teaching the theory in a Tennessee high school. A higher court upheld the law against teaching Darwin's theory in public schools, but overturned the fine on a legal technicality.Google Scholar

178 These labels and remarks are quoted primarily from unpublished and informal sources such as letters and conversations.Google Scholar

179 Hunt, Alan, “Behavioural Sociology of Law: A Critique of Donald Black,” 10 J.L. & Soc'y 20, 30, 35–39, 42 (1983). But see also id. at 45–46 n.68.Google Scholar

180 Sciulli, 20 Law & Soc. Inquiry at 821 n.33; see also id. at 827-28 (cited in note 124).Google Scholar

181 David F. Greenberg, “Donald Black's Sociology of Law: A Critique,” 17 Law & Soc'y Rev. 365 (1983).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

182 Sarat, Austin, “Donald Black Discovers Legal Realism: From Pure Science to Policy Science in the Sociology of Law,” 14 Law & Soc. Inquiry 776–77 (1989).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

183 Constable, Marianne, “Sociological Justice and Jurisprudential Nihilism,” 11 Oxford J. Legal Stud. 114 (1991); id., “Genealogy and Jurisprudence: Nietzsche, Nihilism, and the Social Scientification of Law,” 19 Law & Soc. Inquiry 574–75 (1994). Since I chose royal purple for the dust jacket of The Behavior of Law, perhaps I shall someday be called a monarchist as well.Google Scholar

184 Some therefore call me a “positivist.” E.g., Hunt, 10 J.L. & Soc'y at 21; Constable, 19 Law & Soc. Inquiry at 573; Frankford, 20 Law & Soc. Inquiry at 788 (cited in note 2); Sciulli, 20 Law & Soc. Inquiry at 805 (in title). But I am a positivist only in the sense that I am not a negativist who believes a science of social life is impossible or undesirable. Positivism is a label used primarily by nonscientists, especially those who claim science has limitations of which scientists are ignorant and those who are, for one reason or another, hostile to science. Scientists, however, rarely use the concept of positivism. Physicists, for example, do not refer to Newton or Einstein as a positivist, nor do biologists refer to Darwin as a positivist. Among scientists, a scientist is simply a scientist. And those who believe a science of social life is impossible apparently do not realize that it already exists. My work is an example.Google Scholar

185 One of Einstein's biographers, a physicist himself, remarks that “many physicists” regard his general theory of relativity (a geometrical conception of gravitation) as “the most perfect and aesthetically beautiful creation in the history of physics, perhaps in all of science.” Bernstein, Einstein 72 (cited in note 90).Google Scholar

186 Whitrow, Einstein 42 (cited in note 57).Google Scholar

187 H. Levy in id. at 43.Google Scholar

188 Hoffmann, Albert Einstein 143 (cited in note 56). During the 1920s, in fact, a German association called the “Study Group of German Natural Philosophers” held public meetings devoted entirely to the refutation and condemnation of Einstein's theories. Einstein jokingly called it the “Antirelativity Theory Company, Limited.” In 1931, the association published a book entitled 100 Authors Against Einstein. Regis, Einstein's Office 21 (cited in note 71). See also White, Michael & Gribbin, John, Einstein: A Life in Science 148-50 (New York Dutton, 1993).Google Scholar

189 Pais, Einstein Lived Here 159 (cited in note 90).Google Scholar

190 The same applies to major innovations in general: “New political ideas, new aesthetic forms or new scientific theories inevitably seem crazy in the framework within which they appear.” Cyril Stanley Smith, “Structural Hierarchy in Science, Art, and History,”in Wechsler, Aesthetics in Science 44 (cited in note 53).Google Scholar

191 Pais, Abraham, Niels Bohr's Times: In Physics, Philosophy, and Polity 29, unnumbered footnote (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). For another version of the same conversation, see Kaku, & Trainer, , Beyond Einstein 12 (cited in note 60).Google Scholar

192 For overviews of sociological theory, see, e.g., Turner, Sociological Theory (cited in note 118); Collins, Randall, Four Sociological Traditions (orig. pub. as Three Sociological Tradition, 1985) (rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

193 See any collection of readings in jurisprudence. E.g., Shuchman, Philip, ed., Cohen and Cohen's Readings in Jurisprudence and Legal Philosophy (orig. pub. 1951 by Cohen, Felix S. & Cohen, Morris R., eds.) (2d ed. Boston: Little, Brown, 1979); Lord Lloyd of Hampstead & Freeman, M. D. A., eds., Lloyd's Introduction to Jurisprudence (orig. pub. 1959) (5th ed. London: Stevens & Sons, 1985). See also Posner, 8 J. Legal Stud. (cited in note 165); Editors, “Critical Legal Studies Symposium,” 36 Stan. L. Rev. (1984).Google Scholar

194 Black, 81 Yale L.J. (cited in note 160).Google Scholar

195 But I do not ignore the participation of lawyers in law itself: Lawyers contribute to the social structure of cases and are part of the subject matter of legal sociology. On “lawyer effects,” see id., Sociological Justice 13-14 (cited in note 9). At the same time, my work implicitly diminishes the importance of lawyers in the determination of legal events.Google Scholar

196 As mentioned earlier, positivism is a term used primarily by nonscientists.Google Scholar

197 My words invert a comment by anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss about his search for human beings in a “state of nature” in the jungles of Brazil “I had been looking for a society reduced to its simplest expression. The society of the Nambikwara had been reduced to the point at which I found nothing but human beings.”Tristes Tropiques 310 (orig. pub. 1955), trans. John Russell (New York: Atheneum, 1970).Google Scholar

198 Here I paraphrase Niels Bohr, a founder of quantum mechanics, a theory with a conception of physical reality even Einstein could not accept: “Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.”Quoted in Kaku & Trainer, Beyond Einstein 49.Google Scholar

199 The Spanish painter Joan Miró said he wanted to “assassinate painting.” Penrose, Roland, Miró 65 (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1985). Salvador Dalf later claimed credit for being his accomplice and delivering the “death-blow”: “The painting that we were going to assassinate together was ‘modem painting.’”Quoted in Néret, Dalí (cited in note 112). A post-personal sociology similarly implies the assassination of modem sociology.Google Scholar

200 It has not escaped my attention that the death of the person entails a moral as well as a scientific revolution: The locus of morality shifts from people to social life itself.Google Scholar