Talk:Social fact

Two points for whoever wrote or revised this article
1 The second half of the first sentence makes no sense:

In positivist sociology, social facts are the social structures and cultural norms and values that are external to, of making sociology an all-encompassing discipline that contained all others—'the queen of sciences', in his terms— Durkheim was less ambitious.

2 The article ends mid sentence.

"Social facts are things that force individuals to do certain behaviors."??

Robinson Crusoe alone on his island may be forced by facts to behave in certain ways: the fact that it is an island forces him to remain there; the fact that the weather caused his hut to collapse forces him so leave it to seek shelter elsewhere, etc., but "social fact" is an inappropriate name for these facts, since he is alone. Moreover, the fact that John is married to Jane and they live under one roof and have two children appears to be a social fact regardless of whether it forces anyone to behave in any particular way. Michael Hardy 23:43, 15 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Or, if I may liberally translate what you just said, Michael, "this is nonsense". Indeed, the notion of a "social fact" is rather nonsensical, but the idea itself had an important role to play in the development of modern thought (in rather the same way that the idea of phlogiston was important to the development of modern chemistry). I hope I've made that a little clearer - though it's difficult to do that when several of the fundamental concepts are not well-known. As so often with this sort of subject, the challenge is to write in such a way that the text is both accurate and readable by the non-specialist. It's not so hard to do one or the other, both at the same time is a challenge! Tannin 14:15, 16 Sep 2003 (UTC)


 * Constraints, things you would have to fight against to change the world, your current status in the world based on the collective thinking of the community. Collective in this sense that if they were egalitarian, your knowledge would be golden. However in a capitalist, money talks and walks and knowledge is just something to play with.
 * I will admit much of this is nonsense but gives a broader view into the idea of man themselves understanding why they are in their current position, why others are in their current position, why they may belong to the others.. etc.. This is not individual based. The individual is always part of society. Man understanding why they are their current position is because of social facts that have put constraints on their freudian Id if I'm correct. Yet, I think a majority of this does relate more to the psychological aspect of sociology then anything else, which gives basis for social control. The majority would disagree with me, though. I'm thinking this is because man is plural in the sense that the collective behavior of many men would create a collective that then changes society, if well established becomes a social fact. The parts that are clearly viewed as what is current in the world and has always been something that happens in society to me, would be considered a social fact. Crime, law and order, sucidie, birth, the trading of goods.. etc. When a collection of people start gathering in these activities and they live through the times, they become a social fact. Which is different than a social current which is something the collective is trying to establish in hope that it lasts for centuries to come.--Cyberman 01:43, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

An article on the social fact would benefit by quoting and discussing Durkheim's definition of social facts from The Rules of Sociological Method; in the first chapter he provides a very succinct and lucid definition of social facts. I am away from my books for the next two weeks but will do this myself if it hasn't been done by May. Christopher Powell 02:11, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure, but I think the last editions of 71.198.140.166 and 65.96.192.110 made some mess in the article. I'm not too good at sociology nor at english, so I can't fix it, but if someone could take a look at it... 89.78.34.211 11:26, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

This article has a serious postmodern and interpretativist bias. Hopefully I will have some time to fix it up later, but if anyone can do anything about it in the mean time it might be nice. The very fact that it classifies a certain strand of sociology as 'positivist' should send off warning bells, as that is a typical postmodern weasel word. Countermereology (talk) 00:00, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Taha Hussein
The second sentence has the following: "...and his close associate Taha Hussein". I've never heard of Hussein in the context of Durkheim, am I missing something? I almost deleted the passage, but thought I'd ask here first. Unfortunately I'm away from my notes, otherwise I'd try to improve this article. Steve-g (talk) 12:42, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Origin of the Term
One thing that should probably be fleshed out in this article is the origin of the term, "Total Social Fact". This source states that the term was introduced by Maurice Leenhardt and Marcel Mauss. Christopher Powell mentioned a section from Durkheim's The Rules of Sociological Method that talks about "social facts". This Google Book search gives a few more sources with which to fool around. I'm not an expert in sociology and don't have time to do all the necessary research right now, but I'm leaving this here in case someone wants to take it up. --Olegkagan (talk) 18:55, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Evidence for concept and whether concept is generally accepted any more?
Does any one know whether or not this term is any longer used in sociology. I'm not an expert in the field, but a short search in the journal Sociology came up with only a few mentions of the term and mostly in a historical context, i.e the authors were talking about the history of the science.

This has to do with my second question. Since it appears to be so unpopular today, might this be because no one was ever capable of creating evidence to back it up? Does any one know of at least one single study which attempts to show the existence or non-existence of "social facts"? 128.214.208.50 (talk) 10:30, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

The answer to your second question is, "You're asking the wrong question." Social facts are theoretical concepts, not hypotheses. You don't prove or disprove theory or "show the existence or non-existence" of theory; theory is a way of looking at the world and organizing what you see. To ask whether a theory has fallen out of fashion (and social facts haven't--I don't have the time to give you a full discussion of this, but just search through some of the real sociology journals--AJS, ASR, or Social Forces, for example--and you'll see what I mean) because of insufficient empirical evidence is to have a dangerously skewed view of what theory is (and of what sociology is, for that matter). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.186.111.22 (talk) 22:15, 7 May 2014 (UTC)


 * So, in other words, your claim is that scientific concepts (and you speak of theories also) do not need to be validated by experimental (or any other kind even?) evidence? "Social fact" is just one concept, not unlike "phlogiston" and "bodily humours"? 88.112.19.167 (talk) 20:13, 20 May 2014 (UTC)


 * I just read some of the posts above. Interestingly, the editors there seem to be handling this entire term as a sort of "quaint" and misinformed term. 88.112.19.167 (talk) 20:21, 20 May 2014 (UTC)


 * No, I'm not saying that scientific concepts don't need to be validated; you clearly misread my statement. I'm saying that you're confusing theoretical concepts and empirical concepts. You can test the relationship between, say, parents' income and offspring's education, and between offspring's education and offspring's income.  You can find (empirically) that parents' income is a better predictor of offspring's education than even offspring's academic ability, and that offspring's education is a very strong predictor of offspring's income. (This is all supported by standing research.)  You can then argue, from a Marxian/conflict theory perspective, that education (just like other non-economic institutions) is set up to maintain the existing class system; people have money because they are educated and are educated because they have money.  But you would neither have proved nor disproved--or "validated" or "invalidated"--Marxian/conflict theory by doing that.  The relationships are empirical concepts, and they can be proved or disproved.  The purpose of education that you would be arguing for, however, is a theoretical concept; for that reason, it cannot be proved or disproved.  Theory is a way of organizing information and telling an understandable "story" about it; it isn't information itself.


 * The examples you chose seem to tell me that your theory professor didn't make the nature of theory clear enough. The bodily humours weren't theoretical concepts, any more than we would call, say, neurotransmitters theoretical concepts.  We know that serotonin exists and we believe that it has certain neurological properties which affect health and mood, just like the Medieval world and the early moderns knew that bile existed (as we still do) and believed that it had certain properties which affected health and mood (as we no longer do).  But we don't use serotonin as an organizing principle to explain the world. It's an empirical concept, just like the humours were.  Neither one is a theoretical concept.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.22.24.84 (talk) 21:34, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
 * The Ip editor here is correct. The theoretical concept of a "social fact" is still used to understand the how social conventions (like "tax" or "marriage") have tangible effects on the world and peoples lives. The IP editor is also correct in suggesting that the original question was based on a failure to distinguish between theoretical concepts and physical entities.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 22:21, 23 May 2014 (UTC)


 * While the original post using the expression "existence or non-existence" might not be exactly the best possible, in some sense the question seems valid regardless. Seems like it is asking: "has the term been shown to be proper and useful or rather useless, undescriptive or confused?" Or: "do professionals of today generally consider it such or is it now "antiquated"?" But this question might, of course, be unanswerable, or at least it might be impossible to find a usable source for such a claim. 88.112.19.167 (talk) 12:21, 24 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Considering "empirical and theoretical" concepts (yeah, maybe I should get a "thepry professor")... Durkheim does say that: "The first and most fundamental rules is: Consider social facts as things". Now, at least this does not seem to me be expressing it "as a theoretical concept" (as opposed to an empirical one.


 * I also noticed using Google Ngram that the term seems to have increased in popularity (as measured in appearance frequency) until 1971 after which it declined rapidly. Yet, if you look at a sample of the publications from 2008 (the latest year) it seems that reliable scientific books still use the term. 88.112.19.167 (talk) 12:43, 24 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, Durkheim argued that for sociology to be a science it should have an object of study and this object should be the social fact which should be considered as a thing in order for it to be studied empirically. That is not a claim about the ontological status of social facts but a statement of taking the assumption of a specific concept as a basic theoretical assumption. Now yes, you may be right that a more generous reading of the question would have been to think of it as a question of whether the concept was still considered useful. His request for a study trying to prove or disprove the existence of social facts suggests to me that that would be a misreading of his intent, but for the record the answer to the question would be: "social facts" while not necessarily labeled by that term continues to be the object of study for a large part of the social sciences. For Durkheim social facts are ways of acting that are shaped not by the physical environment but by sets of social conventions that are external to the individual mind and but exists as collective representations within a social group. The concept as such is not attempting to posit the existence of anything, but rather to provide a theoretically framed description of a phenomenon that every human being is intimately aware with - namely the fact that social rules and institutions play significant roles in constraining and producing different ways of behaving. To deny the validity of this observation would be tantamount to suggesting that social institutions and cultural constructions such as the practices of "marriage", "tax", "talk shows" or the game of ping pong, are some how not created by humans through social interactions but have a priori existence. Now it may be possible to discuss whether specific human activities are best understood as social facts or as something else (perhaps for example biologically conditioned), but to reject the notion of the existence of social facts (whether called by this name or another such as "social construction") would be a rather extreme posture. Perhaps there are some biological determinists who would argue that creating the Simpson's was written into Matt Groenings DNA, but I dont think such a position could be a part of any mainstream dialogue on human behavior.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 19:42, 24 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Is any of this something that could be added to the article? 88.112.19.167 (talk) 19:03, 25 May 2014 (UTC)