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On Hybrids and Histories of Sociology

In 1967 Robert Merton published a scathing and perfectly justified attack upon his sociologist-colleagues for their failure to observe the distinction between the "history" and "systematics" of sociological theory. That the two fields possessed very different functions, Merton argued, was "obvious enough to be embarrassing" after all, biologists do not confuse the history of their discipline with current biological knowledge. Yet the continued intermingling of the two in sociological curricula and publications, together with the tendency of all sociologists to feel themselves qualified to teach and write the "history of sociological theory" (surely all that is required is an acquaintance with the classic writings of an earlier day), suggested to Merton that the distinction had just not caught hold. The result of this attractive but fatal confusion, Merton continued, was neither history nor systematics, but a "poorly thought-out hybrid"-a "most parochial, almost Pickwickian conception of the history of sociological theory as a collection of critical summaries of past theories spiced with short biographies of major theorists." And the irony, Merton concluded, was that sociologists retained this utterly shallow conception of the history of ideas at the very time that a "new breed" of specialized historians of science (e.g., Thomas Kuhn, Charles Gillispie, Everett Mendelsohn, Derek Price) was drawing widely and deeply upon the sociology, psychology, and politics of science for theoretical guides to their interpretations of the past. The appearance of these two major works in the history of sociology just a decade later, both amid rather inflated expectations and neither of which should be dropped on one's foot thus provides an occasion for reassessing Merton's somewhat gloomy appraisal as well as examining the books themselves. An immediate difference in the two volumes is indicated by their titles; for while both claim to be "histories," they do not intend to be histories of the same thing. In his introduction, therefore, Szacki freely paraphrases Joseph Schumpeter's History of Economic Analysis and thus distinguishes between: the history of sociology-of the development of the cognitive activity labeled by that name; the history of sociological thought of the development of the intellectual treatment of sociological problems, regardless of institutional labels; and the history of sociological analysisof the development of the scientific method of investigating social facts. Szacki's concern is with the second, while Bottomore and Nisbet, once again invoking Schumpeter, concentrate on the third; but the question for the historian of social science is whether and to what extent either work is a substantial contribution to that field, in the sense called for by Merton-whether they are "authentic histories" genuinely concerned with "the complex filiation of sociological ideas." The blame for Szacki's History of Sociological Thought must be shared by its editor and publisher. As for the latter, the book does not live up to the lamentable hype which its length and price apparently required; in addition, as Szacki himself repeatedly emphasizes in his introduction, it is not really "a complete history of sociology in any sense of the term" (p. xx). In fact, Szacki's goal is quite modest. Drawing upon his lectures at -the University of Warsaw and admittedly relying