Jean-Michel Berthelot

Jean-Michel Berthelot (1945–2006) was a French sociologist, philosopher, epistemologist and social theorist, specialist in philosophy of social sciences, history of sociology, sociology of education, sociology of knowledge, sociology of science and sociology of body.

Epistemology and history of sociology

Berthelot's philosophy and history of social sciences was influenced by Kant, French historical epistemology of Bachelard, Canguilhem, Koyré and Gaston Granger, the falsifiability of Popper and Lakatos and the epistemological reflections of sociologists, from Durkheim, Weber and Simmel to Passeron, Adorno and Habermas.

Jean-Michel Berthelot's epistemological work combined the philosophy and history of science in the study of sociological theories to understand the logic of construction and justification of sociological knowledge. Berthelot created a typology of sociological explanations, constituted by six logical schemas of intelligibility: causal, actancial, hermeneutic, structural, functionalist and dialectic. These types of explanation were the result of formalization of theory and arguments in the history of sociology.

Berthelot, at the same time, criticized the epistemic relativism and defended the pluralism and openness in sociology, which makes him, in the contemporary debate on philosophy of social sciences, a rationalist and constructivist. The pluralism in sociology, in Berthelot's epistemology, is not only inevitably, but even fruitful for the research and theoretical debate.

Works

• 1983 Le piège scolaire, Paris, PUF, 304 pages.
• 1988 J.M. Berthelot ed., E. Durkheim, Les règles de la méthode sociologique, nouvelle édition critique avec notice biographique, index, variantes, précédée d'une étude originale, Les règles de la méthode sociologique ou l'instauration du raison-nement expérimental en sociologie, 60 p. Paris, Flammarion, coll. Champs.
• 1991 La construction de la sociologie, Paris, PUF, collection Que-sais-je, 128 p., n° 2602. ( 5 ème éd. 2001).
• 1995 Durkheim, l'avénement de la sociologie, Toulouse, PUM, 186 p.
• 1996 Les vertus de l'incertitude. Le travail de l'analyse dans les sciences sociales, Paris, PUF, 271 p. Réedition "Quadrige-Essais Débats", 2004
• 2000, Sociologie. Epistémologie d’une discipline. Textes fondamentaux, Bruxelles, De Boeck, 479 p.
• 2000 La sociologie française contemporaine (sous la direction de), Paris, PUF, 2000, 274 p. Réédition Quadrige, 2001, 2003.
• 2001 Epistémologie des sciences sociales (sous la direction de.), Paris, PUF, coll. 1er cycle, 600 p.
• 2003 Figures du texte scientifique (sous la direction de ), Paris, PUF.
• J.-M. Berthelot, O. Martin, C. Collinet, 2005, Savoirs et savants. Les études sur la science en France, Paris, PUF.