The Interdisciplinary Potential of Pure Sociology

Donald Black created a purely sociological theory that explained social life without reference to psychology, biology, or individual persons as such. Granting that he succeeded, and that his theories have value, we can revisit the question of interdisciplinary work. Does pure sociology have implications for psychology, biology, or the study of individual persons as such? Here I suggest several ways in which Blackian theory and the Blackian paradigm can guide work in other fields, including applications in social psychology, to the study of personality and perception, to the field of ethology, and finally to evolutionary biology. Black’s pure sociology offers important insights and new directions even for those who are not themselves pure sociologists.