Durkheims methodology: A critical Analysis

Submitted toDr. Uttam kumar panda

Submitted byShubhranshu rai

B.A.LL.B. (Hons.)
Semester II,
Section B,
Batch- XV
Roll No - 163

Sociology project
Date of submission: 15-02-2016
Hidayatullah National Law University
Raipur, Chhattisgarh, India

Declaration

I, Shubhranshu Rai, hereby declare that this project work is an original piece
of research and is not a result of plagiarism, the sources of data has been
adopted from other sources as well and proper mention about such sources has
been made in the form of footnotes and in bibliography.
I have completed this project work under the guidance of Dr. Uttam
kumar panda, faculty of sociology, Hidayatullah National Law University.
Raipur (C.G).

Acknowledgements
First and foremost I would like to thank my course teacher Dr. Uttam kumar
panda sir for providing me the topic of my interest. Also I would like to thank our
Vice Chancellor sir for providing the best possible facilities of I.T and library in
the university.
Thanks to the God, Parents and all the member of HNLU family who gave
me the strength to accomplish the project with sheer hard work and honesty.
I also owe my gratitude towards University Administration for providing me
all kinds of required facilities with good Library and IT lab. This helps me in
making the project and completing it. My special thanks to Library Staff and IT
staff for equipping me with the necessary data and websites from the internet.
This Project venture has been made possible due to the generous co-operation of
various persons. To list them all is not practicable, even to repay them in words is
beyond the domain of my lexicon. I would also like to extend my warm and
sincere thanks to all my colleagues, who contributed in innumerable ways in the
accomplishment of this project.

Shubhranshu Rai
B.A.LL.B. (Hon.)
Semester I, Section B,
Batch XV
Roll no.163

Table of Content
Declaration... 1
Acknowledgements.. 2
Review of literature...4
Objectives...9
Research Methodology......9
Introduction ..........10
Chapter- 1
The comparative strategies of Emile Durkheim....12

Knowledge and its relation to other kinds of knowledge and culture values
The subject matter of social science
Classification in sociological investigation
The nature of sociological explanation
Verification in sociology

Chapter- 2
Key features of Durkheims methodology..19
Major findings....22
Conclusion......23
Reference.24

Review of literature

As observed, The Rules of Sociological Method was simultaneously a treatise on

the philosophy of social science, a polemic against the enemies of sociology, and
the manifesto of the emergent Durkheim "School"; and it is important to weigh its
failures in the light of these multiple, discordant intentions. Nonetheless, it is
difficult to avoid the conclusion that this is Durkheim at his worst, and that he is at
his best when, where, to precisely the extent, and even "because" he departed from
these programmatic utterances. The concept of the "social fact" itself, for example,
must be described as extraordinarily capacious if not downright indiscriminate,
incorporating the full range of potentially explanatory social phenomena -population size and distribution, social norms and rules, collective beliefs and
practices, currents of opinion -- from the infrastructural to the super structural
level; and as Durkheim's willingness to focus on the latter rather than the former
increased over the course of his career, The Rules --rather awkwardly for so
imperious a piece -- appeared to straddle an equivocal, intermediate stage.

It might be argued, of course, that these ambiguities are somewhat relieved by

Durkheim's insistence that social facts may be distinguished from their biological
and psychological counterparts by their "externality" and powers of "constraint";
but here similar difficulties persist. The suggestion that social facts are external to
any particular individual, for example, raises few objections, though a concern for
balanced statement might add (as Durkheim increasingly did) that they are
also internal to particular individuals; but the suggestion that social facts are
external to all individuals can be justified only in the limited sense that they have a
prior temporal existence, and any extension beyond these limits is subject (as
Durkheim frequently was) to charges of hypostatizing some metaphysical "group
mind."
The term "constraint" seems to have enjoyed a still greater elasticity, for Durkheim
used it variously to refer to the authority of laws as manifested through repressive
sanctions; the need to follow certain rules in order to successfully perform certain
tasks; the influence of the structural features of a society on its cultural norms and
rules; the psychological pressures of a crowd on its members; and the effect of
socialization and acculturation on the individual. The first of these usages, Lukes
has observed, seems more felicitous than the second (which is perhaps better
described as a "means-end" relation), and the last three seem something else
altogether -- i.e., far from being cases of "constraint" or "coercion," they rather
describe how men are led to think and feel in a certain way, to know and value
certain things, and to act accordingly. It was these latter usages, moreover, which
Durkheim increasingly adopted as his interests shifted from the structural
emphases of The Division of Labor to the focus on collective representations
characteristic of The Elementary Forms; as he did so, "constraint" became less an

"essential characteristic" than a "perceptible sign," and eventually, it disappeared

altogether.
Like his definition of social facts, Durkheim's rules for their explanation represent
a laudable effort to establish sociology as a science independent of psychology; but
here again, "psychology" seems to have meant several different things to Durkheim
-- explanation in terms of "organic-psychic" factors like race and/or heredity;
explanation by "individual and particular" rather than "social and general"
conditions; and, most frequently, explanation in terms of "individual mental states
or dispositions." In each instance, Durkheim discovered logical or empirical
shortcomings; but if social facts thus cannot be completely explained by
psychological facts, it is at least equally true that even the most determinedly
"sociological" explanations necessarily rely upon certain assumptions, explicit or
otherwise, about how individual human beings think, feel, and act in particular
circumstances. Sociology may not produce many laws, W.G. Runciman has
observed,

but

it

certainly

consumes

them

--

especially

those

of

psychology. Durkheim's insistence that social facts can be explained only by other
social facts was thus both excessive and naive.
Durkheim's effort to find objective criteria by which "normal" might be
distinguished from "pathological" social facts was a rather transparent attempt to
grant scientific status to those social and political preferences we have already
observed in Book Three of The Division of Labor. In addition to the logical
difficulties of inferring "social health" from the "generality" of a phenomenon,
Durkheim himself recognized the practical obstacles to drawing such inferences in
"transition periods" like his own; but since economic anarchy, anomie, and rapidly
rising suicide rates were all "general" features of "organized" societies, Durkheim's
second criterion -- that this generality be related to the general conditions of the

social type in question -- could render them "pathological" only by reference to

some future, integrated society which Durkheim somehow considered "latent" in
the present. Durkheim, in short, tended to idealize future societies while dismissing
present realities, and thus appears to have been oblivious to the sheer historical
contingency of all social arrangements.
The example chosen to illustrate these criteria -- the "normality" of crime -reflects the same conservative preconceptions. Even if we accept the argument that
the punishment elicited by crime reaffirms that solidarity based on shared beliefs
and sentiments, for example, we must still ask a series of more specific questions -Which beliefs and sentiments? Shared by whom? What degree of punishment?
Which "criminal" offenses? Committed by whom? For in the absence of specific
answers to such questions (Durkheim's treatment of these issues is unrelievedly
abstract), the claim that crime is functional to social integration could be used to
justify any favored set of beliefs and practices, and any type or degree of
punishment, simply by arguing that the failure to punish would be followed
inevitably by social disintegration. Durkheim's additional claim -- that crime is
functional to social change -- was a simple extension of the view discussed in
Chapter 2, that law is the direct reflection of the conscience collective. But, as
Tarde was quick to point out, there is no necessary connection between the
violation of these laws constituting crimes and the sources of moral and social
innovation.
Taken together, these criticisms suggest that Durkheim's claim that his sociological
method was free of philosophical and political doctrines must be considered an
instance of what Jorgen Hagerman might call his "self-misunderstanding."
Philosophically, for example, Durkheim was clearly a social realist and rationalist
-- he believed that society is a reality independent of individual minds, and that the

methodical elimination of our subjective preconceptions will enable us to know it

as it is. In so far as social facts are culturally transmitted from one generation to
another, and individuals do learn and are thus shaped by them, this is
unobjectionable; but it is equally true that social facts are themselves
constituted by the meanings attached to them by those agents whose acts, thoughts,
and feelings they are, and that such subjective interpretations are thus a part of the
reality to be "known." The question of what religion "is," for example, is hardly
one which can be settled aside from the meanings attached to it by those whose
"religion" is under investigation; and any effort to study it independent of such
meanings runs the risk not merely of abstracting some "essentialist" definition of
religion bearing no relation to the beliefs and practices in question, but also of
unconsciously imposing one's own subjective interpretation under the guise of
detached, scientific observation.
Politically, as we have seen, Durkheim maintained that scholars make poor
activists, abstained from participation in socialist circles, and generally presented
himself as a sociological expert advising his contemporaries on their "true" societal
interests; but it is difficult to see how theories which so consistently and
emphatically endorsed the secular democratic, egalitarian, anti-royalist, and antirevolutionary values of the Third Republic could reasonably be regarded as devoid
of political interests and objectives. The point here is not simply that these theories
served political ends, or even that these ends were Durkheim's own; it is rather that
here the distinction between social thought and social action becomes elusive to
the point of non-existence; for Durkheim's entire social science, including choice
and formulation of problems, definition of terms, classification of social types

explanatory hypotheses, methods of proof

indeed, even the denial of all

philosophical and political commitments itself was a deeply political act.1

Research Methodology
This project work has been carried out following the descriptive analytical
approach. It is largely based on theoretical study of Durkheim's Methodology. At
the same time, efforts have been made to understand Durkheims method and
approach. Books & other references as guided by faculty of sociology were
primarily helpful for the completion of this project.

Watkins, Ideal Types and Historical Explanation, British Journal for the Philosophy of
Science, vol. 3 (1952), p26Rosenberg, Philosophy of Social Science, p153

10

Objective
To understand the Durkheims approach towards sociology.
To know the Comparative Strategies of Emile Durkheim.

To know the Key Features of Durkheim's Methodology of Sociology.

To understand the Method of Emile Durkheim.

Introduction
David

mile

Durkheim

was

French

sociologist, social

psychologist and philosopher. He formally established the academic discipline and

with Karl Marx and Max Weber is commonly cited as the principal architect of
modern social science and father of sociology.
Much of Durkheim's work was concerned with how societies could maintain
their integrity and coherence in modernity; an era in which traditional social and
religious ties are no longer assumed, and in which new social institutions have
come into being. His first major sociological work was The Division of Labor in
Society (1893). In 1895, he published The Rules of Sociological Method and set up
the first European department of sociology, becoming France's first professor of
sociology.[4] In 1898, he established the journal L'Anne Sociologique. Durkheim's
seminal monograph, Suicide (1897), a study of suicide rates in Catholic and
Protestant populations, pioneered modern social research and served to distinguish

11

social science from psychology and political philosophy. The Elementary Forms of
the Religious Life (1912) presented a theory of religion, comparing the social and
cultural lives of aboriginal and modern societies.
In The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), Durkheim expressed his will to
establish a method that would guarantee sociology's truly scientific character. One
of the questions raised by the author concerns the objectivity of the sociologist:
how may one study an object that, from the very beginning, conditions and relates
to the observer According to Durkheim, observation must be as impartial and
impersonal as possible, even though a "perfectly objective observation" in this
sense may never be attained. A social fact must always be studied according to
its relation with other social facts, never according to the individual who studies it.
Sociology should therefore privilege comparison rather than the study of singular
independent facts.
Durkheim sought to create one of the first rigorous scientific approaches to social
phenomena. Along with Herbert Spencer, he was one of the first people to explain
the existence and quality of different parts of a society by reference to what
function they served in maintaining the quotidian (i.e. by how they make society
"work"). He also agreed with his organic analogy, comparing society to a living
organism.[16] Thus

his

work

is

sometimes

seen

as

precursor

to functionalism. Durkheim also insisted that society was more than the sum of its
parts.
Unlike his contemporaries Ferdinand Tnnies and Max Weber, he focused not on
what

motivates

the

actions

of

individuals

(an

approach

associated

with methodological individualism), but rather on the study of social facts.2

2

Durkheim, Social Facts in Readings in the Philosophy of Social Science, ed. Martin and McIntyre,
p44http://www.soc.duke.edu/~jmoody77/TheoryNotes/rules

12

CHAPTER-1
The Comparative Strategies of Emile Durkheim
Emile Durkheim is commonly and correctly regarded as the foremost comparative
analysts in the history of sociology. In his work he faced a number of common
problems that arise in comparative analysis, and attempted to overcome them in
ways that are still instructive. Moreover, had occasion during the course of his
careers - Durkheim in 1895 to produce major theoretical and methodological
statements on the program for sociology. Each statement was incomplete in many
ways; for example, while assigned comparative sociological analysis a central
place in their programs for sociology, neither developed a detailed, explicit
statement of strategies for comparative analysis.

13

Nevertheless, his reflections, considered together, expose the major methodological

dilemmas encountered in comparative analysis. His methodological writings are
further instructive in that while he began with methodological perspectives that
were radically opposed to one another; each made a number of significant
modifications of these starting points in the course of his argument. As a result, his
practical program for sociological investigation - to say nothing of his actual
empirical research - resemble Webers one another much more than their
methodological perspectives.3

In this part of the course we will examine the methodological contributions of

Durkheim with an eye to identifying certain general issues in comparative analysis.
More particularly, Durkheim will be contrast under the following headings:

(1) The character of scientific knowledge and its relation to other kinds of
knowledge and cultural values;
(2) The appropriate range of data to be investigated by sociologists;
(3) Classification in sociological investigation;
(4) The nature of sociological explanation; and
3Watkins, Historical Explanation in the Social Sciences in Readings in the Philosophy of Social Science, ed.
Martin and McIntyre, p448

14

(5) Verification in sociology.

(1) The character of scientific knowledge and its relation to other kinds of
knowledge and cultural values
While insisting that the subject matter of sociology is distinct from that of other
sciences, Durkheim also insisted that the sociologist should approach his subject
matter in the same state of mind as the natural scientists. Regarding the social
sciences of his day as analogous to alchemy before the rise of the natural sciences,
he condemned them as having dealt "more or less exclusively with concepts and
not with things".
The investigator should free his mind of all preconceptions, take a more passive
relationship to social reality, and deal with phenomena "in terms of their inherent
properties" and their "common external characteristics" Classifications should not
"depend on [the sociologist] or on the cast of his individual mind but on the nature
of things.
Durkheim's positivism is understandable as an expression of his impatience with
unfounded and unverified theories of his day, and as a strategic appeal for
empirical observation. Yet as a general methodological program, it evidently
presents serious problems. The decisive problem concerns the possibility of ridding
oneself of all preconceptions and letting the real world of empirical phenomena
speak for itself. How is it possible to perceive a single set of external
characteristics without actively selecting from among all the possibilities?

15

(2) The appropriate range of data to be investigated by sociologists

The subject matters of social science
Durkheim regarded the proper subject matter of sociology as "social facts." These
are to be distinguished from both biological (eating, sleeping, for instance) and
psychological (reasoning, for instance) facts. They include those aspects of society
(for example, a society's religious system, its language, and its system of currency)
which have an existence independent of the individual consciousness of society's
members and exercise a constraining influence on their behavior. The existence of
social facts is
(1) To be defined independently of individual consciousness,
(2) To be expected to manifest regularities peculiar to themselves and not
expressible in psychological terms.
(3) And to be expected to impose their influence on the individual's behavior.
Thus Durkheim was concerned to set the social level apart from the psychological,
and to insist on their independence. Social facts differ from psychological facts in
quality, in substratum, and in milieu, and he reiterated that the substance of social
life cannot be explained by purely psychological factors.

Approaches to Empirical Data:

Durkheim focused upon the observable and the measurable. A social fact such

16

as social solidarity, he noted, "is a completely moral phenomenon which,

taken by itself, does not lend itself to exact observation nor indeed to
measurement." He was drawn to study various observable kinds of statistics,
which record "the currents of daily life" (for example, market statistics);
costumes, which record fashions; and works of art, which record taste.
Psychology suffered on this count, Durkheim added, because psychological
facts are "internal by definition," and therefore inaccessible; "it seems that
they can be treated as external only by doing violence to their nature. For
Durkheim, the preference would be to regard statistical series as standardized
expressions of definite "things" distinct from any meaning that individuals
attached to them.
Most of the significant contrasts between the two theorists, as reviewed up to
this point, may be understood in terms of how each conceptualized the role of
the investigator (observer) and the role of the actor (observed) in the
generation of knowledge

Durkheim assigned a passive role to both. In his insistence that facts are
"things" he held that they cannot be modified by a "simple act of the will"; in
his insistence that the observer free himself of all previous preoccupations, he
called on him not to attempt to influence empirical facts, but to let them impress
themselves upon his mind according to their inherent properties. In these ways
the observer is regarded as passive. And because facts are "social," they enjoy
an existence independent from the individual, work their influence upon him
despite his efforts to resist, and are governed by laws specific to the social level.
In these senses, actors as individuals contribute little to sociological knowledge

(3) Classification in sociological investigation

17

One important way in which Durkheim assessed the general significance of social
facts was to relate them to a conception of "normal" or "pathological social facts".
Conceptions such as normal or pathological should be defined in relation to a
"given species" and "only in relation to a given phase of its development." What is
normal for a simple, preliterate society is certainly not normal for an advanced,
complex society. For any "given species" it is the statistical generality of a social
fact that gives it its normality.
The significance of a social fact - that is, whether it is normal or pathological is to
be assessed not by some intrinsic feature of the fact but by the societal context of
the fact the requirements of the species at its level of development. Such a
formulation calls immediately for a classification of species and of levels of
development, since without it the investigator could not make the necessary
assessments. Durkheim was aware of this pressure to classify that arose from his
formulation and in proposing to classify, he tried, much like Weber, to steer a
course between diversity and complexity of social life.

(4) The nature of sociological explanation

Causal analysis, instead, involves the search for "a correspondence between the
fact under consideration and the general needs of the social organism, and in what
this correspondence consists, without occupying ourselves with whether it has been
intentional or not. While stressing this priority, Durkheim acknowledged that
knowledge of the function was "necessary for the complete explanation of the
phenomena," because "it is generally necessary that [a fact] be useful in order that
it may maintain itself.

18

According to Durkheim the determining cause of a social fact should be sought

among the social facts preceding it and not among the states of the individual
consciousness. The sociologist's main task is to discover features of the social
milieu that contribute to the character of social life; Durkheim himself sought to
explain the social division of labor by reference to social facts such as the size of
society and its dynamic density, and to explain variations in the social suicide rate
by reference to the ways in which groups are integrated and regulated.4

(5) Verification in sociology

Durkheim's general answer to the issue of verification of sociological explanation
was simple: when the experiment is not available, the only recourse is indirect
comparison, or the comparative method. Before characterizing the particular ways
in which he suggested employing it, however, he launched a brief polemic against
John Stuart Mill's observation that a given event may have different causes under
different circumstances, and enunciated the principle that "a given effect has
always a single corresponding cause," adding that, for example, "if suicide depends
on more than one cause, it is because, in reality, there are several kinds of suicide."
Durkheim's chosen method to establish cause and effect was the method of
concomitant variation or correlation. "For this method to be reliable, it is not
necessary that all the variables differing from those which we are comparing shall
have been strictly excluded. The mere parallelism of the series of values presented
by the two phenomena, provided that it has been established in a sufficient number
4

Ibid, p442

19

and variety of cases, is proof that a relationship exists between them. Such
reasoning shows the necessity for Durkheim's postulate that a given effect has
always a single corresponding cause, which, if correct, permits stronger inference
from the correlation than might otherwise be the case5

CHAPTER-2
Key Features of Durkheim's Methodology of Sociology
1. Durkheim was epistemologically a positivist, assuming that facts were given
in experience. He saw no difference in pursuing inquiry in the physical and social
sciences. Similarly, he seemed committed to the version of determinism that one
could explain and predict action if one had the pertinent regularities (laws). (See
his Rules of Sociological Method.)
2. Durkheim is rigorously anti-psycho logistic (anti-individualist) in his
understanding of society. In this he follows Comte (who follows Rousseau) in
rejecting the 'utilitarian' conception of the genesis of society (Hobbes, Smith,
Bentham, Mill). We cannot, he argues, 'deduce society from the individual.' It is
clear enough, accordingly, that he rejected psychological explanations of
behavior, but is not clear whether he supposed that one could offer sociological
explanations of behavioror indeed, whether he restricted explanations to types
of behavior, e.g., anomic vs. altruistic suicide, and to social phenomena, e.g.,
suicide rates.

Ibid, p433Durkheim, op cit, p435

20

3. His Suicide is rightly taken to be a seminal work in what is today called

quantitative sociology. For Durkheim (following J.S. Mill), while one could not
use the Methods of Agreement, Difference and Residues in social science (since
experiment was impossible) one must use the Method of Co variation. (Logistic
Regression is a post-Durkheim strategy for this.)
4. In response to 'utilitarians,' he argues that there are social facts. Social facts are
not 'psychological facts,' but are 'ways of acting or thinking with the peculiar
characteristic of exercising a coercive influence on individual consciousness.'
Social facts are 'external,' 'objective' and not reducible to 'states of the individual
consciousness.' Thus, 'legal rules, moral obligations, popular proverbs, social
conventions' 'have a permanent existence and do not change with the different
applications made of them, they constitute a fixed object, a constant standard of
reference for the observer, which excludes subjective impressions and purely
personal observations.' It was 'the very foundation' of his method that 'social facts
are to be treated as things.' Inquiry into social facts defines sociology. He argued
that social facts constrained behavior, seemed not to hold that they also enabled
it, and sometimes suggested that they determined behavior.
5. 'Social facts do not differ from psychological facts in quality only; they have a
different substratum.' Durkheim calls this 'the collective conscience.' 'The states of
the collective conscience are, he writes, 'different in nature from the states of the
individual conscience; they are representations of a different sort. The mentality of
groups is not the same as that of individuals; it has its own laws.' (This raises
difficult questions about the sense in which a collective conscience exists or
alternatively, about the ontological status of 'social facts.')

21

6. The collective conscience is represented by symbols. Indeed, 'social life, in all

its aspects and in every period of its history, is made possible only by a vast
symbolism' (p. 186). His work on symbols as representations, especially in The
Elementary Forms of Religious Life, was enormously influential, as well.
7. In his Division of Labor in Society, Durkheim offers four dimensions of the
collective conscience: the volume, intensity, rigidity and content of the beliefs and
values which comprise the collective conscience. Seeing how they change and
differ allows us to see the difference between traditional societies (based on
'mechanical solidarity' and modern societies which are characterized by 'organic
solidarity.' He argued that the tradition that had followed Adam Smith
misconceived the function of the division of labor. He insisted that it is critical to
solidarity.
8. Durkheim defended functionalism, but was a critic of the idea that because
some social institution was useful, it was perception of its usefulness that brought
it into existence. But he followed Comte in holding that societies, like organisms,
have 'a lawful development.' Anomie, e.g., was an 'abnormal' condition which
demanded a response if the 'social organism' was to regain a 'healthy' homeostasis.6

Kincaid, Reduction, Explanation and Individualism in Readings in the Philosophy of

Social Science, ed. Martin and McIntyre, p497Ibid, p497

5. Durkheim, op cit, p436

22

Major finding
Firstly we found Durkheims approaches toward sociology.
Then we learned about Comparative Strategies of Emile Durkheim.
Then we saw some major examples of Durkheims methodology.
Then we learned about basic theories of Durkheims.
Then we learned the Key features of Durkheims of sociology.
Then we learned about the uniqueness of Emile Durkheims approach of
sociology.

23

Conclusion
Durkheim, approaching social science more from a model of nature science,
attempted to modify and adapt the logic and procedures of the natural sciences to
sociological inquiry.
To conclude, it is apparent that Durkheim is by no stretch of the imagination a
strict follower of the methodological individualist tradition. His assertion of the
existence of things separate to the sum-totaling of individual psychological
dispositions in context of information and relations with others makes sure of this:
his core thesis is fundamentally at odds with a traditional interpretation of
methodological individualism for this reason. However, if one is to admit a very
much weakened definition of individualism, Durkheim appears to be sympathetic
to the importance of the individual in large-scale social events in terms of their
embodying them microcosmically.

24

References
1. Watkins, Ideal Types and Historical Explanation, British Journal for the Philosophy of
Science, vol. 3 (1952), p26
2. Rosenberg, Philosophy of Social Science, p153
3. Ibid, pp157-158
4. Watkins, Historical Explanation in the Social Sciences in Readings in the Philosophy of
Social Science, ed. Martin and McIntyre, p448
5. Ibid, p442
6. Durkheim, Social Facts in Readings in the Philosophy of Social Science, ed. Martin and
McIntyre, p435
7. Ibid, p434
8. Ibid, p434
9. Ibid, pp433-434
10. Ibid, p439
11. Ibid, p433
12. Rosenberg, op cit, p126

25

13. Durkheim, op cit, p435

14. Kincaid, Reduction, Explanation and Individualism in Readings in the Philosophy of
Social Science, ed. Martin and McIntyre, p497
15. Ibid, p497
16. Durkheim, op cit, p436

External links
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org
https://en.wikipedia.org
http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/369
http://www.soc.duke.edu/~jmoody77/TheoryNotes/rules