Sociology and Space, No. 143, 1999.
Original scientific paper
The Metatheoretic View of the Science of the Society
Nikola Skledar
Abstract
Contemporary science, especially the social and the humanistic, needs to examine the
existing theoretic and methodological structure, paradigms and principles by means of a
special self-reflection and self-analysis, and thus enable its further development. This is the
basic task and sense of the scientific (and therefore sociological) metatheory (Ritzer, 1997).
Every real social theory as theoria (rational observation of the essence of the phenomena)
also contains a super-experiential (surexperimental), philosophical remnant, since it cannot
be completely checked empirically. These are the general premises and understandings
of the nature and the essence of the society, man and history, which are the starting
point of all the relevant theories of society - axiomatic, conceptual, empirical and paradigmatic
(Afric, 1989) and other (Čaldarović, 1990).
This theoretic link of the science of the society with the social philosophy, the philosophy
of history and philosophical anthropology has its methodological repercussions. They manifest
themselves primarily in the need of proper use and transcendental method, as well as
the other general methods of thinking, in sociology and about it, if it wants to be a general
and global science of society with a permanent humanistic topicality and dignity and
not just a limited, fragmentary, empirical, theoretically unorganised and ephemeral sociography.
Keywords
sciences of the society; sociology; theoretic and methodological nature and essence; presumption of the development
Hrčak ID:
119967
URI
Publication date:
5.3.1999.
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