Thirty years ago many sociologists and many non sociologists – assumed a fairly

simple model of scientific activity and explanation, one which generally goes
under the name of positivism, and durkheim has been taken as the archetypal
sociological positivist. There is a degree of truth in this but not the whole truth.
The work of Karl Popper (1959) has reasserted itself at the heart of positivist
philosophy. The work of karl popper (1959) has demonstrated that we cannot
positively prove something to be always the case, if, for example, I wished to
prove that all swans were white in a ‘positive’ sense I would have to show that
every swan that has existed or does or will exist is white and that of course is
impossible. Without such proof, however, it is always possible that we can find a
black swan/ popper’s response os to argue that science is concerned not with
establishing absolute forms of knowledge, but with establishing that knowledge
claims are false (in this example by trying to find a black sean). Science should
always be questioning knowledge claims.

We can also find in comte’s work a notion that became very important to
Durkheim, that of society as whole-that no one part of a society can be studied
separately form the other s but must be seen in the context of its relationships to
all other parts..
The injunction to treat social facts as things is to distinguish them from such
ideas, or ideologies. He is not saying that we should treat them objectively which
modern students often assume-thinking of objectivity as a state of mind, a way of
looking at what we study/ social facts remain the same, however we look at
them; they are objective in the sense that they are like objects, and they do not
change if we think of them differently, just as my desk would remain a desk, even
if I thought it was a rhinoceros. Objectivity is a quality of objects, not an attitude
of mind. Durkheim cited the law, embodied in codes set out in books, or
statistical evidence about, for example, suicide. A social fact cannot be accepted
as such until we find some external embodiment of identifying feature; it can only
constrain us if it has an existence external to us. A scientific investigation need to
directed at a limited number of clearly defined fact, and defining facts through
reference to some moral law- a crime is that which runs counter to morality, yet
morality varies form society to society, if not form individual to individual.
However all societies have a legal system or at least they have laws, and operate
various forms of punishment when those laws are broken. It is here that we find
the external feature of a crime that enables us to identify it as a social fact- the
fact that it is punished. The criminal nature of the act is not feature inherent in
the act itself; it is in the fact that is punished. The definition meets three of
Durkiem’s criteria for the identification of social facts. The definition must be
common-sense pre-notions-that is why it is surprising; secondly, it must be
general: we cannot start form individual manifestations of a phenomenon; and,
thirdly, there is external constraint: if I want to kill ny grandmother in order to
inherit her wealth, cannot rewrite the law to excuse the action. It is a crime
whether I kike it or not.

Newby(1983) to the more sophisticated study by lukes(1973), Durkheim’s notion

of a social fact is regarded as inadequate, and in the case of suicide his
statistical methods have been questioned; through the late 1960s and early
1970s there was a much mor systematic attack on Durkheim’s whole enterprise,
particularly as it was manifested in suicide. It seems to me that these criticisms
are well worth looking at, but some of them are easy.
What I am suggesting here is that Durkheim is not quite the strict Positivist in the
modern sense that his critics take him to be. Modern positivism has gone beyond
comte in attempting to root knowledge is sense experience and to establish
general laws in a rigorous way. If we read Durkheim as trying to do this, then the
criticisms hold, but if we regard him as developing more realist arguments-
looking for underlying causes of surface phenomena- he can be defended. In this
context, his insistence that social facts should be regarded as thing is an
insistence on existence of underlying structures or processes which affect the
way in which individuals behave to some degree independently of their will the
structures or beliefs push us un one direction rather than another, limit our
choices, and some times perhaps force us to things. Not many people can resist
the force of, for example, a patriotic war, and not many people become
voluntarily unemployed, except in a very limited sense of taking up a redundancy
offer. in other words, what is valuable is Durkheim’s insistence that there is such
a thing as society and that there are various way in which it imposes itself upon
us; it is there and it works on us, whatever we might think about it.
There is something else to be learnt about the nature of argument in social
theory; that precise definitions are rarely not part of the game and, although we
need to be as clear and precise as we can, it is possible to define and idea out of
existence. When on writer criticizes another for being imprecise, it is often-but not
always-a criticism of somebody for thinking, and there is always a degree of
ambiguity in thinking. there are types of theoretical argument which open things
up and other type of argument which close things down; it is not always easy to
decide which is appropriate, but in the case of Durkheim’s arguments about
social fact, in a strong or a weak form has been at the centre of sociology-even
the development of a ‘postmodern society’ would accept this.

The Rules of Sociological Method (1985/1964), chapters 1,2 and 3 second

edition
Suicide (1897/1952) especially part 2 and 3 of Classic Sociological tex.