The Implications of Durkheim's Philosophy of Science

Abstract

Reading Durkheim's critics leads one to conclude that either Durkheim was very confused or they are. Between them there is certainly no collective. Some have claimed he was conserv ative1 while others deny it;2 his logic has been described as fallacious3 and incisive4; he is a moral philosopher5 to one critic and a great empirical scientist6 according to another; his use of conscience collective is praised by one writer7 and described as deplorable8 by another; he has been characterized as anti-individ ualistic9 by one critic while another has denied it.10 Perhaps the contradictory interpretations result from a real inconsis tency in his work. Possibly he cannot be understood because his work is of line with thought.11 Such explanations, however, are excessively superficial. What is the basis for the claim that Durkheim is inconsistent? It seems plausible that his thought is more complex than is typically realized by scholars searching it for simple logical continuities or discontinuities. Perhaps he merely appears inconsistent because he has been apprehended from diverse points of view or from a single point of view foreign to his own Many of his critics have ignored the possibility that Durkheim's ideas were subject to development (as might surely be expected of any competent scholar) and that his writings could not thus be expected to agree on every point. Moreover, Durkheim's ideas should not be loosely compared with twentieth-century thought. Such a comparison both takes Durkheim out of his temporal context and implies that modern methods are necessarily better. If Durkheim had a goal different from that of modern sociology his method could be expected to be different. Different scientific ideas and goals are not necessarily wrong ideas and goals — this assumption would lead to a science both static and