Talcott Parsons Quotes
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The importance of certain problems concerning the facts will be inherent in the structure of the system.
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Theory not only formulates what we know but also tells us what we want to know, that is, the questions to which an answer is needed.
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If observed facts of undoubted accuracy will not fit any of the alternatives it leaves open, the system itself is in need of reconstruction.
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The implications of these considerations justify the statement that all empirically verifiable knowledge even the commonsense knowledge of everyday life - involves implicitly, if not explicitly, systematic theory in this sense.
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'System' is the concept that refers both to a complex of interdependencies between parts, components, and processes, that involves discernible regularities of relationships, and to a similar type of interdependency between such a complex and its surrounding environment.
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If there are four equations and only three variables, and no one of the equations is derivable from the others by algebraic manipulation then there is another variable missing.
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In a sense the present work is to be regarded as a secondary-study of the work of a group of writers in the field of social theory. But the genus 'secondary study' comprises several species; of these an example of only one, and that perhaps not the best known, is to be found in these pages.
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A social system is a mode of organization of action elements relative to the persistence or ordered processes of change of the interactive patterns of a plurality of individual actors.
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The most elementary communication is not possible without some degree of conformity to the 'conventions' of the symbolic system.
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As a formal analytical point of reference, primacy of orientation to the attainment of a specific goal is used as the defining characteristic of an organization which distinguishes it from other types of social systems.
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p. v; Preface first edition