Explore "The Sociological Imagination" by C. Wright Mills on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
As a style of social science, abstracted empiricism is not characterized by any substantive propositions or theories. It is not based upon any new conception of the nature of society or of man or upon any particular facts about them. True, it is recognizable by the kinds of problems its practitioners typically select to study, and by the way in which they typically study them. But certainly these studies are no reason for such celebration as this style of social research may enjoy.
In itself, however, the character of this school's substantive results is not an adequate basis on which to judge it. As a school, it is new; as a method, it does take time; and as a style of work, it is only now spreading into a fuller range of ‘problem areas.'