Introduction

This work is first and foremost a trial, a first attempt. Our knowledge of society is limited, piecemeal, and scattered. Often in the social sciences we have to be content with a few assemblages (hypotheses, theories) of a provisional construction, assemblages that will be quickly modified or replaced, if not immediately abandoned. In this precarious situation of the social sciences, what we can do better, what we must try to do better, is differentiate and generalize our hypotheses and integrate them into the best established network of knowledge, in order to ensure they continue to develop. In other words, we have to articulate the social sciences, to systematize and unite sociology, psychology, and other neighboring disciplines.

If I emphasize the irrational (or rather on the nonrational), it is primarily in reaction against models that postulate individual rationality, models that are the basis of the great theoretical systems of the social sciences. I am thinking primarily of neoclassical economics and economism (psychological, sociological, and political), particularly the theories of games, decision, and collective choice. If sociology and political science, as well as neoclassical economics, had not been taken over by rational choice models, talking about nonrationality would make no sense. We would then simply talk about real individual conduct, real social facts, or just individual conduct and social facts. Some types of conduct would be considered, at least hypothetically, relatively rational. Others would be considered less so, or not at all. These suggestions would be eminently reasonable, even obvious, if the social sciences were not the victim of a sort of apriorism of rationality, as if it were impossible to think about social reality outside the postulates of rational choice. This is why I will stress in this work the ubiquity of nonrational conduct, showing that the more closely you examine individual conduct, the further it appears to be from the rational choice model.

Knowledge tends to obscure disorder. As writers such as Leibniz, Bergson, and Piaget have observed, we perceive order before we perceive disorder. But to perceive order does not mean perceiving the reasons for it, and this applies to the social sciences. If Hobbes wondered why there wasn’t more disorder in society, it is not so much because he did not see it, or did not see it clearly, but because he misinterpreted its mechanisms. If thinkers as diverse as Spinoza, the philosophers of the Enlightenment, the English utilitarians, as well as Compte, Marx, and Weber, conceived of modernity and rationalism, it was not only because they rejected the religious and romantic models, but also in part because they had difficulty in conceiving of the nonrational and because of their obscure fascination with the rational. Today this understandable difficulty is compounded by the fact that the nonrational is obscured by rational choice models. As we will see, these models, which are only the instrumental concept of economic rationality, actually play the role of postulates, not hypotheses.

My position is that sociology ultimately has to explain social reality. But I should say right away that we do need models (which are all rational) to provide explanations. Nevertheless, a model alone cannot not explain everything, perhaps because it always explains something. There is no explanation except when a model is "attributed" to reality, as Piaget said (Apostel et al., 1973). In other words, reality itself is supposed to function like a model. Of course, even the idea of reality is vague; it is more a question of finding a limit, and there are several methods for confronting reality. But this should not be an excuse for hiding behind abstraction or simplism, nor should it prevent us from constantly trying to improve our explanations by challenging arguments and testing hypotheses.

My thesis is simple, if somewhat counterintuitive. Social order (or the stability of social structures) emerges from nonrational individual conduct (which social order, in turn, upholds). This thesis is a reversal of the position of rational choice theorists, according to whom rational individuals produce an irrational society (Hardin, 1982). To express it otherwise, social order and individual nonrationality together make up a whole. The thesis is, strictly speaking, only incompatible with the extreme, rarely expounded positions of radical reductionism and radical holism. These two currents of thought reject emergence. According to radical reductionism, there is nothing new socially; a rational society is the result of rational individual conduct; social contradictions are simply individual contradictions; or they are a mixture (but not a combination) of the two. According to radical holism, social facts have nothing to do with individual conduct, therefore there cannot be a link between individual nonrationality and social order. I should stress right away that since social systems are interconnected, order is relative. There can be a great deal of order at one level and less at a lower or higher level. What creates order at one level can help create disorder at another level. Thus the problem of order is intimately linked to that of disorder.

This thesis rests on a monist point of view according to which sociology (or socio-economics) cannot be separated from psychology. To a certain extent the social sciences today neglect or ignore psychology. It is being replaced by postulates of rationality (when it is not being replaced by ideal types or conventions). Social scientists are not taking into account current psychological knowledge. Contemporary psychology has abandoned both behaviorism and subjectivism. Individual conduct, which includes behavior, intentionality, reasoning, beliefs, feelings, etc., are seen as nonrational. This evolution in the scholarship raises the question of social order, which can no longer be looked at from the perspective of a postulated individual rationality. Nor can it simply be attributed to individual intentions. We can no longer be content with societal metaphors such as "machine" or "organism." Finally, social order can no longer be seen in a dualist framework, as some magical equilibrium that is justified in advance by the satisfaction it brings (to all, to the most capable, or only to those in power, according to the justifications), any more than it can be considered the product of an "invisible hand," as Adam Smith maintained, or an omnipresent "recorder" "which delivers everyone from responsibility for everyone elseall others" to quote Walras.