Talcott Parsons quotes

Talcott Parsons was an influential American sociologist, best known for developing the theory of structural functionalism. His work shaped the study of social systems and the analysis of institutions in the twentieth century. He established key concepts and frameworks that continue to influence sociology today. Here are 43 of his quotes:

Theory not only formulates what we know but also tells us what we want to know, that is, the questions to which an answer is needed.

Talcott Parsons

suggest that we think of theories as spotlight. this imagery is useful. a spotlight will only illuminate so much. wiht any theory there will always be the things that are left in darkness, still unexamined and unexplained. parsons referred to these as'residual categories.

Talcott Parsons

System' is the concept that refers both to a complex of interdependencies between parts, components, and processes, that involves discernible regularities of relationships, and to a similar type of interdependency between such a complex and its surrounding environment.

Talcott Parsons

Without deliberate planning on anyone's part, there have developed in our type of social system, and correspondingly in others, mechanisms which, within limits, are capable of forestalling and reversing the deep-lying tendencies for deviance to get into the vicious circle phase which puts it beyond the control of ordinary approval-disapproval and reward-punishment sanctions.

Talcott Parsons

Among those who are satisfactory in this respect it is desirable to have represented as great a diversity of intellectual tradition, social milieu and personal character as possible.

Talcott Parsons

The conception that, instead of this, contemporary society is at or near a turning point is very prominent in the views of a school of social scientists who, though they are still comparatively few, are getting more and more of a hearing.

Talcott Parsons

From all this it follows what the general character of the problem of the development of a body of scientific knowledge is, in so far as it depends on elements internal to science itself.

Talcott Parsons

The most elementary communication is not possible without some degree of conformity to the "conventions” of the symbolic system.

Talcott Parsons

Every social system is a functioning entity. That is, it is a system of interdependent structures and processes such that it tends to maintain a relative stability and distinctiveness of pattern and behaviour as an entity by contrast with its - social or other - environment, and with it a relative independence from environmental forces. It "responds", to be sure, to the environmental stimuli, but is not completely assimilated to its environment, maintaining rather an element of distinctiveness in the face of variations in environmental conditions. To this extent it is analogous to an organism.

Talcott Parsons

A social system consists in a plurality of individual actors interacting with each other in a situation which has at least a physical or environmental aspect, actors who are motivated in terms of a tendency to the "optimization of gratification" and whose relation to their situations, including each other, is defined and mediated in terms of a system of culturally structured and shared symbols.

Talcott Parsons

A social system is a mode of organization of action elements relative to the persistence or ordered processes of change of the interactive patterns of a plurality of individual actors.

Talcott Parsons

As a formal analytical point of reference, primacy of orientation to the attainment of a specific goal is used as the defining characteristic of an organization which distinguishes it from other types of social systems.

Talcott Parsons

Ideology is a system of beliefs, held in common by the members of a collectivity.

Talcott Parsons

A theoretical system does not merely state facts which have been observed and that logically deducible relations to other facts which have also been observed. In so far as such a theory is empirically correct it will also tell us what empirical facts it should be possible to observe in a given set.

Talcott Parsons

But the scientific importance of a change in knowledge of fact consists precisely in j its having consequences for a system of theory.

Talcott Parsons

A gloss is a total system of perception and language.

Talcott Parsons

The implications of these considerations justify the statement that all empirically verifiable knowledge even the commonsense knowledge of everyday life - involves implicitly, if not explicitly, systematic theory in this sense.

Talcott Parsons

The importance of certain problems concerning the facts will be inherent in the structure of the system.

Talcott Parsons

Special emphasis should be laid on this intimate interrelation of general statements about empirical fact with the logical elements and structure of theoretical systems.

Talcott Parsons

Spencer's god was Evolution, sometimes also called Progress.

Talcott Parsons

It is that of increasing knowledge of empirical fact, intimately combined with changing interpretations of this body of fact - hence changing general statements about it - and, not least, a changing a structure of the theoretical system.

Talcott Parsons

If there are four equations and only three variables, and no one of the equations is derivable from the others by algebraic manipulation then there is another variable missing.

Talcott Parsons