Author details
All Talcott Parsons Quotes
The main concern of the study is with the outline of a theoretical system. Its minor variations from writer to writer are not a matter of concern to this analysis.
Talcott Parsons

51% of people like this quote
The conception that, instead of this, contemporary society is at or near a turning point is very prominent in the views of a school of social scientists who, though they are still comparatively few, are getting more and more of a hearing.
Talcott Parsons

50% of people like this quote
That is, a system starts with a group of interrelated propositions which involve reference to empirical observations within the logical framework of the propositions in question.
Talcott Parsons

50% of people like this quote
Spencer's god was Evolution, sometimes also called Progress.
Talcott Parsons

49% of people like this quote
The part an actor played on stage was once written on a separate roll of paper.
Talcott Parsons

48% of people like this quote
Empirical interest will be in the facts so far as they are relevant to the solution of these problems.
Talcott Parsons

48% of people like this quote
It is that of increasing knowledge of empirical fact, intimately combined with changing interpretations of this body of fact - hence changing general statements about it - and, not least, a changing a structure of the theoretical system.
Talcott Parsons

48% of people like this quote
But the scientific importance of a change in knowledge of fact consists precisely in j its having consequences for a system of theory.
Talcott Parsons

46% of people like this quote
A theoretical system does not merely state facts which have been observed and that logically deducible relations to other facts which have also been observed.
Talcott Parsons

44% of people like this quote
But the fact a person denies that he is theorising is no reason for taking him at his word and failing to investigate what implicit theory is involved in his statements.
Talcott Parsons

39% of people like this quote
From all this it follows what the general character of the problem of the development of a body of scientific knowledge is, in so far as it depends on elements internal to science itself.
Talcott Parsons

39% of people like this quote
Among those who are satisfactory in this respect it is desirable to have represented as great a diversity of intellectual tradition, social milieu and personal character as possible.
Talcott Parsons

36% of people like this quote
Related authors
