SOURCE: "General Works, Theory and Its History," in The American Economic Review, Vol. 25, No. 3, 1935, pp. 502-8.

In the following essay, Parsons reviews the English-language translation of Trattato di sociologia generale.

The final appearance, after being heralded for so many years, of the English translation of Pareto's Trattato di Sociologia Generale is surely an event of the first importance for the social sciences of the English-speaking world, though perhaps not altogether for the reasons most generally heralded. The editor, his collaborators and the publishers are to be congratulated upon the successful completion of so monumental a task.

The particular form which Pareto's venture into sociology takes happens to be of the greatest importance to all economists who are interested in the general status of their science relative to the other social sciences. Pareto's experience has a peculiar relevance to the current methodological controversies in American economics between "orthodox" and...