Dreams of pure sociology

Unlike older sciences such as physics and biology, sociology has never had a revolution. Modern sociology is still classical-largely psychological, te leological, and individualistic-and evert less scientific than classical so ciology. But pure sociology is different: It predicts and explains the beha vior of social life with its location and direction in social space-its geo metry. Here I illustrate pure sociology with formulations about the behavio r of ideas, ideas, including a theory of scienticity that predicts and expl ains the degree to which an idea is likely to be scientific (testable, gene ral, simple, valid, and original). For example: Scienticity is a curvilinea r function of social distance from the subject. This formulation explains n umerous facts about the history and practice of science, such as why some s ciences evolved earlier and faster than others and why so much sociology is so unscientific. Because scientific theory is the most scientific science, the theory of scienticity also implies a theory of theory and a methodolog y far the development of theory.