Abstract
The idea of conceptual scheme is clearly present in the classical and modern sociological theory. However, contemporary sociological thinking is highly critical of it and in its radical versions this idea is dismissed altogether. This article traces various historically formed insights into the nature of concept formation in sociology and tries to demonstrate that without the attempts at creating a coherent conceptual scheme, sociology would be deprived of any possibility to push through a specifically sociological perspective on the social world. Talcott Parsons’ conceptual level of theory is examined in detail and taken as an example of a viable theoretical approach based on the transformation of sociological concepts. The account of the sociological dilemma of scheme and reality is brought together with Donald Davidson’s argument against the dogma of scheme and reality. The idea of a conceptual scheme has been discredited in contemporary thinking together with the idea and the project of (grand) general theory of society. It is argued that from the generalizing critique of the idea of general theory it does not follow that sociology does not need sound concepts. If it were so then no sociological knowledge that would not refer only to itself would be possible.Since 2019, TEORIE VĚDY / THEORY OF SCIENCE journal provides open access to its content under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
Authors who publish in this journal agree that:
- Authors retain copyright and publication rights without restrictions and guarantee the journal the right of first publishing. All published articles are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license, which allows others to share this work under condition that its author and first publishing in this journal was acknowledged.
- Authors may enter into other agreements for non-exclusive dissemination of work in the version in which it was published in the journal (for example, publishing it in a book), but they have to acknowledge its first publication in this journal.
- Authors are allowed and encouraged to make their work available online (for example, on their personal websites, social media accounts, and institutional repositories) as such a practice may lead to productive exchanges of views as well as earlier and higher citations of published work.
There are no author fees, no article processing charges, or submission charges.
The journal allows readers to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of its articles and allows readers to use them for any other lawful purpose.
A summary of the open access policy is also available in the Sherpa Romeo database.
Downloads
Download data is not yet available.