Comment: On Logical Formalization of Theories from Organizational Ecology

Theory formalization, once positioned at center stage in sociology, currently plays little role in general sociological work. For about a decade beginning in the mid- 1960s, the promise was held out that formalizationespecially mathematization-would improve the quality of sociological theorizing and promote the development of cumulative theoretical knowledge about general social processes (see, for instance, Coleman 1964; Blalock 1969). Today, formalization lies on the discipline's periphery, as a specialized activity remote from the development and evaluation of sociological theories.' This marginalization and devaluation of formalization partly reflects sociology's retreat from general ("ahistorical") formulations. But it also surely reflects an assessment that the payoff to the style of formalization prominent during the heyday of this movement had not met expectations. This is not the place to attempt a full assessment of what went wrong in sociology's flirtation with formalization.2 But one thing seems clear: there was a mismatch between theories and formalization tools. The available natural-language theories were-and are-partial and imprecise; use of the formal languages, especially mathematics, demanded closure and extreme (usually metric) precision. Efforts at formalizing sociological theories with classical tools required the analyst to assume too much-e.g., to supply the missing assumptions about metrics, continuity, and differentiability of functions. As a result, the formalizations offered during this period yielded models that failed to resonate closely with the original theories.