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2 results

  • 10 - Conclusion

  • John H. Goldthorpe, University of Oxford
  • Book:
    Pioneers of Sociological Science
    Published online:
    15 February 2021
    Print publication:
    18 February 2021, pp 190-210

  • 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.

Pioneers of Sociological Science
  • Statistical Foundations and the Theory of Action
  • John H. Goldthorpe
  • Published online:
    15 February 2021
    Print publication:
    18 February 2021
  • Goldthorpe reveals the genealogy of present-day sociological science through studies of the key contributions made by seventeen pioneers in the field, ranging from John Graunt and Edmond Halley in the mid-seventeenth century to Otis Dudley Duncan, James Coleman and Raymond Boudon in the late twentieth. Goldthorpe's biographies of these figures and analyses of their work reveal clear lines of intellectual descent, building towards the author's model of sociology as the study of human populations across time and place, previously outlined in his book Sociology as a Population Science (Cambridge, 2015). The extent to which recent developments such as computational sociology and analytical sociology are in continuation with the efforts of these influential thinkers is also critically examined. Pioneers of Sociological Science will appeal to students and scholars of sociology and to anyone engaged in social science research, from statisticians to social historians.