CHAPTER V SOCIOLOGY AS DISTINCT FROM THE PHILOS- OPHY OF HISTORY AND THE SEARCH FOR HISTORICAL LAWS iy VHE general remarks made in the preceding chapter | regarding the difference between sociology and social philosophy also apply to the difference between soci- ology and the philosophy of history. The philosophy of history also embraces two fields of philosophic inquiry which flank the field of exact historical inquiry. The first is the epistemology of history, the second the metaphysics of history. The epistemology of history is the inquiry into the thought forms which create “history” out of the available data of the historical actuality. It investigates the axioms, the presuppositions, and the procedures of historiography. It asks about the a priori elements of historical knowledge, about the categories that create the theoretic structure called history out of the data of the immediate historical actuality. Whether the historical account is formulated in terms of a narrative or in terms of so-called historical laws, in neither case does it give a pure reproduction of the actual historical development as it really occurred. The historical account of a social development is always an interpreta- tion. ! As the term “sociology” has been applied to certain types of philosophies of history ever since Comte, it is necessary to treat the methodological differences somewhat more extensively than those of sociology and social philosophy.