Egy vita története. A szociológusok és történészek viszonya a fin de siecle Franciaországában
The story of a debate: the relationship between historians and sociologists in fin de siecle France

Summary/Abstract: My paper examines the relationship between sociology and historiography in France at the turn of the century. Durkheimian sociology rapidly evoked the opposition of a part of contemporary historians, others, however, believed that the methodological and epistemological approaches used by sociology could be profitable in the field of history, too. I analyze and place into context first the two works regarded as the reference points of the debates between 1903-1908 (Charles-Victor Langlois and Charles Seignobos, Introduction aux études historiques and Seignobos, La méthode historique appliquée aux sciences sociales), and then move on to the famous article written in reply to these (François Simiand, Méthode historique et science sociale). Of the texts generated by the disputes whose participants were, among else, Gustave Bloch, Émile Durkheim, Gustave Glotz, Henri Hauser, Paul Lacombe, Paul Mantoux, Seignobos and Simiand, several problems may be gleaned that provide valuable food for further thought to contemporary social scientists, too, in both the area of epistemology (e.g. historical fact vs. historians’ bias, causality or the question of a the individual and the collective) and methodology (e.g. comparative and narrative historiography).

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