The Structure of Social Action

S OCIAL science has suffered from certain major deficiencies. Chief among them has been the lack of a general systematic theory by which to comprehend the generality of social facts and through which some intelligible division of the field could be made-a division the separate theoretical entities of which would still be integral parts of the general structure of social theory. A second major deficiency has been the fact that the indefinite and conflicting congeries of social-science theories have had no systematic empirical testing. Some portions of social theory, classical economics, for example, have been absorbed in a system of generalizations o abstract at times as to be inhibited from a genuine attempt at empirical demonstration. A notable attempt to make a substantial contribution to this problem appears in the volume under consideration. I One of the central objects of Professor Parsons' study is to demonstrate the validity epistemologically of a general theoretical system-a science. His position is partly polemical in that he is, on the one hand, attacking those who hold that "the progress of scientific knowledge consists essentially in the cumulative piling up of 'discoveries' of 'fact,' " that "theory would consist only in generalization from known facts" and would