STATISTICAL AND SOCIAL FACTS FROM QUETELET TO DURKHEIM

The Rules of Sociological Method is most famous for its definition of the social fact Seen in relation to previous statistical writings on t opics like suicide, though, Durkheim's work appears more to limit the domain of social facts than to create one. For Quetelet, Wagner, and M orselli if suicide or marriage varied by age, sew, religion, climate, or race, that was enough to make a statistical fact. Durkeim, rejectin g their positivism refused to speak of facts except in alliance with a distinctively sociological form of explanation.