HERMENEUTICS OF THE SENSE OF "SOCIAL THINGS"

Social reality has a measurable dimension (its quantitative, material component) and other non measurable, immaterial: the sense of choses sociales, which have to be interpreted and comprehended. Both are essential to describe and explain reality, but a naturalistic approach has prevailed in the social sciences for a long time, favouring their assimilation to the natural sciences model. The inter-subjective sense that pervades social reality compels us to take into account people's speech not as a linguistic question, but as a hermeneutic one. And, of course, the object of sociology is not limited to understanding the meanings, but extends to scientific knowledge of the complexity of social reality.