SOURCE: "Simmel's Formal Method," in Georg Simmel, edited by Lewis A. Coser, Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1965, pp. 53-7.

In the following essay, which originally appeared in Archiv fir Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik in 1910, von Wiese offers a consideration of Simmel's method for analyzing social relationships.

Georg Simmel's Sociology is today understandably viewed with the greatest interest by all those who believe in the future of sociology as a science. Although these Investigations into the Forms of Association are broad in scope, the work is fragmentary and incomplete, as its author intended it to be. He would not—could not—present a complete, closed system; the only aim of the book is to clarify his fundamental conception of the problem of sociology by means of a series of applications. The author states:

As a consequence [of the basic conception], it is out of the question to attempt anything more than to begin...