PREREQUISITES OF SOCIALIZATION 87 The presuppositions, assumptions, and basic conditions outlined above are some of the a priori categories of empir- ical society. It may be a question of terminology whether the inquiry which determines them can be called episte- mology. Judged on the basis of method, it does not belong to the empirical science itself, but to that part of the philo- sophic inquiry which investigates the basic assumptions on which the science rests.