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.