Chapter 2: The History of Sociology: The European Perspective

GERD NOLLMANN & HERMANN STRASSER

The history of sociology: The european perspective George H. Mead (1936:116f.) taught us that each generation will write anew its history. Many histories of sociology have been written before, and the sociology of knowledge has made an interesting object of research out of them. However, today's history of sociology will set different priorities than those written 50 or 100 years ago, and it would be interesting to detect the reasons behind such changes. We want to present an overview of three aspects constituting much of sociology's dynamic development. The first aspect is the stepwise emancipation of sociology from philosophical thought. The second is the discovery that societal change and continuity are causally based on meaningful human behavior that needs to be understood and explained in social research. The final aspect is sociology's growing empirically validated knowledge. Finally, we will ask if there is a current tendency aiming at the reintegration ...

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