The subject of this book is limited to the abstract form or "logic" of science, as applied particularly to scientific sociology. But the discussion presented here goes beyond abstraction and serves a practical role in the sociology and history of science by providing a framework for reducing the enormous variety of scientific researches-both within a given field and across all fields-to a limited number of interrelated formal elements. Such a framework may prove useful in assessing empirical relationships between the formal aspects of scientific work and its substantive social, economic, political, and historical aspects. This is a work of synthesis that merits close attention. It provides an area for viewing theory as something more than a review of the history of any single social science discipline.
