IDEAL TYPES AND THE PROBLEM OF REIFICATION
Abstract
Social scientists are usually aware that ideal types are merely constructs that
pick out, indeed exaggerate preselected aspects of social reality. Nevertheless, there
remains a tendency to treat them as if they referred to entities actually existing in the
social world.
This paper shows why the very attempt to avoid reification by denying existence
to social things encourages a tendency to reify ideal types and other constructs which
social science imposes on social reality. It argues that without a realistic ontology of the
social, it is difficult to envision how social reality might "kick" at the constructs social
science seeks to impose upon them and render them problematic. The constructs of
social science select out of an infinite universe of facts only those which they,
themselves, have predetermined to be germane. Once so selected, the facts become
psychologically fused with the constructs that selected them.
All science attempts to simplify and typify the reality it seeks to represent.
However, it is the notion of a reality independent of the constructs science attempts to
impose on it that compels scientists to abandon or modify these constructs as
inadequate representations.
Finally, the paper explores various concrete sources of orderliness in social
reality that can serve as objective constraints on the hypotheses social science seeks to
impose on them.
Convention