Sociology attempts an exact positivist science of social facts

Evidence

But in that case what does it mean to say that the philosophy of praxis is a sociology? What sort of thing would this sociology be? A science of politics and historiography? Or a systematic collection, classified in a particular ordered form, of purely empirical observations on the art of politics and of external canons of historical research? Answers to these questions are not to be found in the book. But only they could be a theory. Thus the connection between the general title “Theory [of historical materialism]” and the sub-title “Popular Manual [of Marxist sociology]” is unjustified. The sub-title would be a more exact title, on condition that one gave an extremely restricted meaning to the term “sociology”. In fact the question arises of what is “sociology”. Is not sociology an attempt to produce a so-called exact (i.e. positivist) science of social facts, that is of politics and history—in other words a philosophy in embryo? Has not sociology tried to do something similar to the philosophy of praxis? — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1523

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines sociology as an embryonic positivist philosophy — a genealogy of the discipline useful for situating how social-science claims function as ideology.
• QUESTION: The tension between sociology-as-positivist-science and philosophy-of-praxis-as-emancipatory-theory is worth tracking into the Islamophobia readings.
• XREF: connects to: Operationalism in physics parallels behaviorism in social science — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 132; Empirical sociology’s operational methodology is itself ideological — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 447; Fact-gathering sociology without critical theory becomes politically irrelevent — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2413 (+2 more)