Unfortunately, the writings of Hempel and Braithwaite are better used as a ground for critiquing efforts like Black's than for supporting them. The discussions depend on and often refer directly to the literature of the philosophy of science, usually from the period shortly after World War II, particularly Richard Braithwaite's (1953) Scientific Explanation and Carl Hempel's paper with Paul Oppenheim (1948) on scientific explanation, which is a classic text in the philosophy of science. The history of discussions of these topics, however, is not promising. Dispelling this fog, as Douglas Marshall attempts to do in his article (in this volume) on Black's idea of a pure sociology (Black 2000), is a service to the profession. The reason we are still discussing Black is the fog of confusion that has been generated over "theory construction" in sociology over decades, not least by Black himself. His "theory" is not a theory in the philosophy of science sense as it pretends to be, since it lacks the deductive structure of a theory. The geometrical magnitudes to which the "theory" refers are not magnitudes in the normal sense, or in any relevant sense. The confusion goes deeper than the simple point that the "theory" is literally false. The only reason it has not ended is that discussions of "science" in sociology are fogged with confusion. That is where any discussion of Black's sociology of law and of his project of a pure sociology should end. All of the theoretical claims made by Donald Black are false. Moreover, the phenomena are better accounted for by cognitive rather than "pure" sociological explainers. These include the following: that the theory is literally false, and is not defensible as an approximation that the magnitudes to which his "geometry" refers are not magnitudes according to standard measurement theory: that the form of the theory precludes testing by correlational evidence. Douglas Marshall's critique of Donald Black states the essential issues with Black's "theory." This article is concerned with the philosophy of science background to the issues with Black's claims, and presents the core issues as they have been normally and historically understood.
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