A Modern History of Sociology in Italy and the Various Patterns of Its Epistemological Development

This work aims at fostering interest in the links between a particular theoretical and conceptual development of sociological science in Italy and the debate surrounding the history of scientific subjects, here called the ‘epistemological history’ of various disciplines. The author sets out to trace the ‘points of view’ emerging from Italian epistemological sociology between the early twentieth and twenty-first centuries and related to the debate on the historical and philosophical sciences. The intention is that of revealing the distinctive characteristics of the latter, their ‘internal’ (logical and methodological) rather than ‘external’ (historical and social) factors, while investigating the task of the new historians of science confronted with the changes caused by various ‘knowledges’ and forms of technological ‘know-how’. The text provides the contemporary scientific community with a new route to follow when seeking to rationally establish and write the ‘history of sociology’. The addressees are, more than anything else, the new generation of scholars of the history of science.