Statistical and Sociological Thinking in Maurice Halbwachs’ Work
Olivier MARTIN

Summary :

Maurice Halbwachs is well-known among durkheimian sociologists for being the one of their number with the greatest interest in statistics and mathematics and in their uses – and their limits – in sociological research. For Halbwachs they were an essential tool in the development of positive sociology, but at the same time their real usefulness was limited to establishing the data or facts which the sociologist had then to interpret, explain and place in a precise social context. He rejected abstract mathematics and all abuses of standardisation. His attitude towards statistics is basically ambivalent in that he wished to apply them to the study of social data without reducing the facts to simple collections of events or individual forms of behaviour.

Key words : Demography, Economics, Sociology, Statistics, Probability, Mathematics, Methodology, Halbwachs, Quetelet
(olivier.martin@paris5.sorbonne.fr)