The Rules of Sociological Method Emile Durkheim

“One of Emile Durkheim’s chief works, this book raises two controversial issues of cardinal importance for all sciences directly concern with human relationships—whether economic, political, or genetic.

The first issue spotlighted is the genuine distinction between the natural and the social sciences. Durkheim reveals that the methods use in the natural sciences are, nevertheless, valid within the social field.

Secondly, he shows how attempts are being made to absorb the social sciences into an enlarged psychology. Against this tendency Durkheim points out that social phenomena, ‘far from being the product of the individual’s own ideas or will, opinion or caprice… have a constraining influence upon the individual and even upon a aggregate of these individuals’.”

"A social fact is every way of acting, fixed or not, capable of exercising on the individual an external constraint; or again, every way of acting which is general throughout a given society, while at the same time existing in its own right independent of its individual manifestations".