**1. Introduction**

54 Sociological Landscape – Theories, Realities and Trends

Stengers Isabelle, *Cosmopolitiques. Tome 1 : La guerre des sciences. Tome 7 : Pour en finir avec la* 

Stengers Isabelle, *L'invention des Sciences modernes*, Paris : La découverte, 1993.

*tolérance*, Paris : La Découverte, 1996-1997.

The approximately 150-year-old functionalistic way of thinking has always had a very dizzy position in sociology. On the one hand, since the birth of the discipline, functionalism has been an essential part of sociological thinking. This holds true especially for the analysis of macro level phenomena, including society as a whole with its structural characteristics and developmental tendencies. On the other hand since the birth of the discipline, functionalism has also been a target of harsh criticism, a kind of mirror against which other theoretical traditions have formulated their specific viewpoints and sharpened their theoretical arsenals. One reason for the criticism has been a specific characteristic of functionalistic theories, namely, that since Comte's theorizing, biology-based evolutionary and physiological analogies and thought structures have been an important factor in these theories. This is still a case, as demonstrated by the functionalistic theories from Talcott Parsons (Henderson, 1928:17), blood circulation and its stabilizing mechanisms) to Niklas Luhmann (Varela and Maturana (1980), self-organizing systems), which search their inspiration partly from biological theories. In addition, most of the discussion concerning functional analysis as a method has been going on in the 'interfaces' of biology and sociology (see, for example, Ariew, et al., 2002).

The stubbornness of functionalism partly relates to the birth of sociology as a discipline. From the middle of the 19th century onwards, the new discipline tried to justify its independency by showing that its object of research – society – was a distinctive object on its own. The founding fathers of the discipline, above all Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer and Emile Durkheim, conceptualized society as analogous with the biological organism as a whole differentiated in parts, with each specialized part taking care of its specific task so that together they comprised a functioning unity. According to their views, neither the relationships between the different institutions of society nor the dynamics of change in the whole were reducible to the goal–directed actions and intentions of individuals, nor could they be explained on the grounds of their biological constitution with its specific traits. They operated according to their own laws, which also made it necessary to develop distinct theoretical models and research methods specific to society as a functioning unity (Heilbron, 1995:270-71; Kangas, 2006:24,252). In addition, the meaning of these new models and methods was not only theoretical but also practical. They were related to the social mission of the new discipline. Firstly, to demonstrate that there is, after all, order in the world,

Contingency Theoretical Functionalism and the Problem of Functional Differentiation 57

Wagner, 2001) at the turn of the twentieth century. For Wilhelm Dilthey (1923 [1883]:90, 105- 9) the differentiation theory à la Comte and Spencer, built upon an analogy with the biological organism, or conceptualized through 'bioteleology' as Hartmann Tyrell (1998:131) characterizes it, was nothing but a form progressive philosophy of history. According to its theory of the phases of history, it believed it had found not only the real telos of historical changes, but also the scientific devices to control and assist the development of societies. According to Dilthey (1923 [1883]:104-9) the conceptual apparatus and methods of the late 19th century human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften) had already outdated theories based

Also Max Weber (1988 [1922]:1-145, 291-383) dissociates himself from all kind of 'collectivistic' and 'organic' speculations, as well from the holism-related thinking of the German historical school and the doctrines of sociology (1985 [1922]:1-11). Society as a concept had for Weber no such comparable theoretical status as it had and still has in the differentiation theories based on the decomposition paradigm, in which society is both the benefiter of the outputs of function systems and the guarantor of the integration of these specialized subsystems (Parsons, 1966; Tyrell, 1994). Nor does Weber allow functionalism as method the same kind of significance it has in the decomposition paradigm –as a way of analyzing or explaining social phenomena on the basis of their supposed tasks or accomplishments. Functional descriptions alone, according to Weber, are insufficient as explanations, although as heuristic or preliminary questions they could at best direct attention to an analysis of social action relevant to the phenomena requiring explanation. As Weber insisted, however, an adequate sociological explanation of social phenomena is possible only on the basis of an 'interpretative' understanding of social action. Consistently with his rejection of functionalism, and of the progressivism the decomposition paradigm implies, Weber mainly refrains from using the concept of differentiation in his writings. On those few occasions he that does, the differentiation thematic is attached to the different life spheres (Lebensordnungen) in their specificity and their peculiar ways of rationalizing and, as Tyrell (1994:394-96; 1998:142-43) points out, not to the society as a whole, which is

Both of the above-mentioned critiques, Dilthey's argument about the decomposition paradigmatic differentiation theory as a new form of a teleological philosophy of history; and Weber's insistence on the heuristic nature of functional considerations and the need to replace them in the last instance with explanations based on the action and interactions of individuals, recur again and again in the critiques of functionalism. The presumption of the goal directness of the historical processes of metamorphosis of societies, together with the supposition of the unilinearity of the processes of change in different societies, are the standard targets of criticism of functional theories, and of one of their offspring: modernization theories (see, for example, Elster, 1978:187-225; Berger, 1996). The claims of the insufficiency of the functionalistic argumentations and the need to replace them by explanations based on the action frame of reference are also recurrent themes in the critiques

One interesting aspect of Dilthey's and Weber's theorizing, which is of great importance in the following argumentation, needs to be noted here. Due to his 'society abstinence' and reluctance to speak about differentiation, it often passes unnoticed that Weber's theory (together with Georg Simmel's differentiation vision, left out here) nevertheless belongs to

on 'naturalistic metaphysics', as he in one connection characterizes them.

interpreted as a carrier of the differentiation process.

(see, for example, Giddens, 1984:293-97; Schwinn, 2003).

although it seems to have disappeared along with ongoing industrialism with its incessant social tumults and the thriving utilitarian individualism caused by it. Secondly, by doing so, the task was to encourage confidence in the possibilities of humans to bring about order and mould their social world according to their wishes and needs.

The above-mentioned model of social differentiation based on the analogy with a biological organism is in sociology called the 'decomposition paradigm' of social differentiation on the grounds that social change in this model is conceptualized as similar to the development of an organism from an undifferentiated embryo to the fully matured form composed of functionally differentiated parts, each specialized in different tasks necessary for the survival of the organism. The concept of function in this model has a two-fold meaning: structural and dynamical. From the structural point of view, the concept of function directs attention to the different parts and their relationships and to their respective tasks in the whole. From the dynamical point of view, the concept of function allows one to see the processes of change as the unfolding of functional differentiation, as the development of an entity from unspecific and undifferentiated, different functions merging 'homogeneity' to fully developed, in specialized tasks differentiated 'heterogeneity', to use Herbert Spencer's vocabulary (Maynz, 1988:14; Stichweh, 1994; Tyrell, 1998:129-34; Stichweh, 2007:534). Hartmann Tyrell (1998:125) has quite justifiably claimed that the differentiation problematic in sociology has been so tightly interwoven with the organism –optics that even the significance of this bond is mostly left unnoticed in sociology. This claim is also tenable for the method of functionalism, the functional analysis. It is still understood predominantly and rather straightforwardly through the organism metaphor, as will be shown below.

Although the 'biologically' inspired theorizing of the founding fathers nowadays seems very outdated, then it was a very modern strand of thought, because the former substance – centered thought was substituted by thinking in relational terms. The reference of the concepts was no longer in the preconceptually existing 'ontic' entities; the concepts with their references take on meaning in accordance with the reciprocal relations they are set to. As Ernst Cassirer (1990 [1910]:403), one of the first who thematized the change happening, says in his early book *Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff*: 'In this way we don't recognize things but we recognize materially (gegenständlich) by during the flow of the same kind of experience contents setting certain kind of limitations and by fixing certain durable elements and reciprocal connections'. In mathematical notation this is expressed by the formula 'y=f(x)', in which both the abandonment of ontological and epistemological 'constants' and the dependency of all values on operations come to the fore. This means that the only constant in functionalism is uncertainty in terms of the observation and its objects, and consequently in terms of knowledge *per se*, as Armin Nassehi (2008a:91) says. Functionalism is so clearly part of the breakthrough of modern science, in which the status of scientific knowledge radically changed as the view of relativity of all knowledge, its dependency on language and observations and the resulting uncertainty gained a stronger hold.
