Abstract

This article discusses the controversial book by Professor Wiktor Stoczkowski, La Science sociale comme vision du monde, published in 2019. Also called Émile Durkheim et le mirage du salut, Stoczkowski’s book accuses Durkheim of cheating, distorting the interpretations of other social scientists, and reproducing the philosophical clichés of his time in order to promote his own view of the world, his “cosmology”. Since it seeks to save humanity from the evils of the contemporary world, this view would come dangerously close to those of totalitarian messianisms. While it exposes Stoczkowski’s main arguments, this essay highlights the relevance of the book for an “anthropology of anthropological thought’s matrixes”. It also criticizes several of its assumptions. In brief, this essay outlines another possible conception for the relation between science and personal cosmology, one which emphasizes the importance of theoretical imagination in scientific research.

Keywords:
Durkheim; Stoczkowski; Cosmology; Epistemology; Imagination