This is something different from simply offering a summary of established facts. Sociological theories must integrate empirical observations into coherent logical structures explaining patterns of relationship. Think of the difference between stating the price of some object and saying prices are determined by supply and demand. Then add to the picture the way luxury goods gain higher prices by their connection to social status.
Facts always require interpretation – figuring out what they mean in relation to different questions or arguments. Making interpretation systematic is one of the main tasks of theory. Sociological theories must offer empirical claims that can be the basis of either tests (and thereby confirmation, correction, or improvement) or comparisons among theories (and thereby judgment as to which more accurately grasps social reality).
Science advances not just by an accumulation of facts, but through a process the philosopher of science Karl Popper called “conjecture and refutation.”11 That is, a scientist (or someone else) puts forward propositions about how the world works; these are initially conjectures, products of imagination as well as knowledge. They become the basis for hypotheses, and research and analysis confirm or reject them. Thinking about what might explain the facts we see always requires imagination (as C. Wright Mills famously pointed out). But refutation drives the development of knowledge forward as much as imagination. Refutation can be very specific and detailed or much more theoretically basic – like challenging the view that the world is flat or that short term self-interest explains all human behavior. Refutation of an important hypothesis demands rethinking of the whole pattern of knowledge that is organized by a theory. Accordingly, some theorists may resist, even when others think the evidence is clear.
Empirical research also depends on theory to specify the objects of its analysis: how do we know what constitutes a community, for example, or a religion? Appealing to common sense doesn’t solve the problem. Common sense is generally formed on the basis of a particular religion or a particular experience of community – and this is a source of bias if one is seeking knowledge of religion or community in general, in all social contexts. More strikingly, an enormous amount of research has been done on ‘citizens’ and indeed ‘human beings’ by looking only at men – and often white men and European-American men. Theorists like Martineau and Du Bois showed how much this obscured, though it sometimes took white male sociological researchers a long time to pay enough attention.
In its blindness towards gender and race, empirical sociology often tacitly incorporated the assumptions of contemporary society. The founders of the US were not troubled by excluding women from voting because of a general sense that their roles were private not public. They tolerated slavery as a political compromise but also out of racial bias. In both cases, they accepted traditional, inherited ideas as true – just like those who doubted the existence of gravity before Galileo. It is a critical theoretical task to challenge received ideas. This is often pushed these tendencies just as it was a task of social movements to demand political recognition and rights.
Theoretical concepts are like lenses that enable us to see phenomena. Take the concept “self-fulfilling prophecy,” developed by the American sociologist Robert Merton in the mid-20th century.5 This calls our attention to a common aspect of human actions that may take place in many different contexts and which we wouldn’t otherwise relate to each other. Aided by the concept, we can easily see the commonality among teachers’ predictions of students’ future success or failure in school, the labeling of criminals (who then find it hard to get legitimate jobs), and the comments of famous securities analysts on TV about what stocks are likely to go up or down. In none of these cases is the outcome of the predictions independent of the predictions themselves.
In short, sociological theory integrated social thought into social science. It aimed not only to be logically clear but also empirically grounded. However, it remained a question how fully social science could match natural or physical science in testing empirical claims with experiments or formalizing logic in mathematical models. There was no question that some questions about human beings could be approached this way, but could all? First, classical sociological theorists like Max Weber argued that because human beings were creators of meanings, and based their actions on these meanings, not just objective facts, sociology needed to include a method of sympathetic interpretation (verstehen). Second, other classical sociological theorists, such as Karl Polanyi, Max Horkeimer, and Theodore Adorno, argued that attempts at perfectly objective accounts of social life usually disguised biases built into the perspectives of the theorists. Polanyi’s example was classical liberal economists who claimed to study universal economic laws were doubly biased. Relations they thought universal – like owning property – were in fact historically produced and different in different settings. Moreover, their analyses were shaped by sympathy for capitalists with property not workers without.
Sociological theories may consider non-social causes for social patterns – like climate or physical geography. But sociological theories on social causes as well as social effects. For example, a biological theory of infection will stress the way viruses reproduce, mutate, and affect host organisms. A sociological theory will analyze the patterns that explain who gets exposed – such as social networks or differences in occupation – who is most vulnerable, and who gets treatment.
Theorists develop concepts with which to grasp social life, identifying patterns in social relations and social action, produce explanations for both specific features of life in society and changes in overall forms of society. They also debate the inconsistencies between different proposed explanations. Theory is thus an indispensable part of sociology, crucial to its standing as a science.
Modernity and the Great Transformation
Science was one factor that made modern society new and different. This meant first of all different from Europe’s immediately preceding history, the ‘middle ages’ understood to have come between the fall of the Western Roman Empire (roughly during the 5th century) and the beginnings of modernity in the Renaissance (mostly 15th and 16th centuries). It meant different secondarily from Classical Greece, Rome, Egypt, and other ancient societies that had flourished around the Mediterranean Sea. And it meant different, third, from the other great civilizations of which Europeans became aware through explorations (and eventually trade and religious missions) launched during the Renaissance. Looking at these three contrasts helped theorists clarify not just what was modern, but what was social. We can see them at work in the development of core themes for classical sociological theory, each of which also reflected how sociological theory was differentiated from work in other emerging social science disciplines.
States. Nested hierarchies of political power and religious authority were central to the Middle Ages. This meant not just that some were ranked higher than others, but that structures of personal authority shaped who fit into recognized groups. Kings did not rule peasants directly. They ruled noble lords who ruled lesser lords, knights, and squires. Their authority only reached the peasants through layers, and at each level, the authority of lords only extended through specific territories.
Medieval kings often claimed to rule by divine right. Legitimate inheritance from the previous king was crucial. Modernity saw a demand to rethink legitimacy, with more emphasis on how well governments served the people in their societies. Politics was reorganized, with classical theorists engaged in trying to shape the outcomes as well as understand the process. Three kinds of political change were crucial:
First, the personal power of individual rulers was increasingly augmented (and eventually replaced) by the rise of state administrative capacity. This took place in an era of repeated wars fought partly over religion and partly to try to consolidate territorial power. Waging war was not just a matter of heroism in battle or having more soldiers than an enemy. It depended on the capacity to manufacture weapons, move troops (and feed and pay them), and increasingly to build ships –