THE TWO THESES OF METHODOLOGICAL INDIVIDUALISM*

IT has become usual in the writings of methodological individualists to suggest that there is but one alternative to their methodological prescription in social science, and this they call ' holism \ Maurice Mandelbaum has sought to counter this by offering a four part classification of types of sociological theories, thus showing that the alternatives of the individualists is simply an instance of the fallacy of false disjunction. However, it is not at all likely that methodological individualists will find Mandelbaum's paper to the point; it does not deal with the problem that concerns them. I am not at all certain that Watkins, for example, would object to discourse about total societies— the usual meaning of' holism ' and the one with which Mandelbaum deals. He would only insist that such discourse must, at least in principle, be analysable into discourse about individuals and their dispositions, and he does refer approvingly to Ayer's statement that ' the English State . . . . is a logical construction out of individual people \ 8 We need-not be concerned with what Ayer here means by