Autor v těchto prvních dějinách české a slovenské sociologie v období od jejích počátků do roku 1948 podle recenzenta výtečně kombinuje historický nadhled, archivní bádání a mimořádnou píli se sociologickým porozuměním. Za její podstatné klady považuje čtivé podání a maximálně možnou objektivitu, ale také faktografické bohatství a spolehlivost. Zároveň se recenzent zamýšlí nad smyslem psaní dějin české sociologie jako společenské vědy, která znamenala ve světovém měřítku v zásadě jen minimální přínos. and [autor recenze] Miloslav Petrusek.
As a challenge to those who do not give much credit to reflecting on sociology as a science, this essay stresses the import of metatheoretical considerations. After all, what is known as postmodern discourse is scarcely a little more than metatheorizing and the phenomenon of the so-called “crisis of sociology” cannot be comprehended without some metatheoretical premises. Knowledge about knowledge should therefore form a special field of inquiry and enjoy its relative autonomy. In this article, the place for metasociology is delimitated by the account of the development of the general science of science. While the prefix “meta-” originally came from linguistics as a way to differentiate a proposition about an object of science from a proposition about science itself, the history of metatheorizing can be traced back to ancient philosophy. Hence, the most important sources of inspiration for this intellectual activity are epistemology and the philosophy of science. A crucial moment in thein development was the so-called “crisis in physics” that carried over to social sciences and spawned many contemporary trends such as the multicultural approach to sociology and the radical stance of methodological anarchism. The major philosophical orientations that have most directly addressed the questions about the scientific knowledge have been neopositivism and analytical philosophy on one hand, and phenomenology on the other one. No claims about metasociology can be made without being acquainted with at least the elementary positions in this exchange of ideas that took place in the philosophy of science. Metasociology, itself divided into metatheory and metamethodology (or general methodology), makes up an integral part of the science of science., Miloslav Petrusek., and Obsahuje bibliografii
The article surveys the ways science was thematized as a sociological subject. It starts with the reflections on knowledge and science in the Enlightenment, further reviews the main contributions of Comtean philosophy and sociology of science, stresses Merton’s role in making the traditional sociology of knowledge open to empirical research, and traces the subsequent development of the field: the progress of quantitative analyses and ethnographic researches of science, the Kuhnian turn towards historicizing and Foucaultian turn towards the politics of science, the evolution of cognitive sociology of science, as well as the inspirations drawn from works of Bloor, Barnes, and Latour., Miloslav Petrusek., and Obsahuje bibliografii
The moderate interpretation of the Thomas´Theorem suggests little more than a failure at the assessment of objective situation. Its radical interpretation allows thinking the existence of new social reality. The postmodern condition facilitates this understanding. The underlying idea is not recent; Marx´s theory is a precurson to the constructionist approach. The canonical foundations of social constructionism were laid by Berger and Luckmann, who sought to reconcile Weberian and Durkheimian traditions in their concept of the social construction of reality. Phenomena like gender or consumerism appear to be suitable objects for such an approach. Attribution of meaning in culture nonetheless offers to expand the principle to any domain and, in some cases, such as the labeling theory of deviation, its tries its own limits. Applied to science itself, the pricniple raises questions about the status of scientific knowledge that circumvent epistemological issues. Social consturctionism is itself surpassed by the linguistic turn and discursive theories of soicety. The notion of society as text may challenge realist and objectivist positions. In order to remain productive, however, the notion must retain the presupposition of order and rules of reading and thus admit that, actually, society is not merely a text., Miloslav Petrusek., and Obsahuje použitou literaturu