INTRODUCTION

yw YHIS first book has to deal with the field of inquiry
1 which flanks on one side the field of the exact sciences
 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 correspondence
 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 categories
 of the social sciences. They are inquiries into problems
 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.