SYSTEMS-THEORY AND THE DOGMA OF THE IRREDUCIBLE CHARACTER OF SOCIAL-LIFE

There is a widespread presupposition in sociology that social systems have specific properties which are not reducible to properties of their elements. i.e., of individuals. This doctrine has given rise to an outlook which separates the social system analytically from the personality system and which treats each system as an environment of the other. It can be shown that this view has not only produced an inadequate conceptual framework but has also discouraged explanatory analyses in sociology. The idea of irreducibility should therefore be discarded.