INTRODUCTION 
yw YHIS first book has to deal with the field of inquiry 
1 which flanks on one side the field of the exact sci- 
ences of the socio-historical actuality. It is the field 
in which the thought movement has changed from the 
exact scientific to the philosophical, in which the method 
of empirical science, with its main emphasis on a corre- 
spondence theory of truth, searches for a support and a 
justification in the method of philosophy, with its main 
emphasis on a coherence theory of truth. 
The inquiries of this field deal with the basic concepts, 
the fundamental presuppositions, and the a priori cate- 
gories of the social sciences. They are inquiries into prob- 
lems which cannot be settled within the field of inductive 
empirical investigation, since they form the basis on which 
that investigation rests. They deal with the problems of 
the philosophy and the methodology of these sciences, and 
with the problems of that field which Simmel, in harmony 
with his wider and more flexible concept of the a priori, 
calls the epistemology (Erkenninisstheorie) of society.