This rhetoric has had an impact on the language and terminology of the social sciences as well. Patterns of human interaction are increasingly described as networks in the sense of this word is used in computer discourse. A similar observation can be made about the word risk, which has been made popular particularly by Ulrich Beck s conception of the risk society, and which in its sociological usage has derived its meaning from nuclear technology. The article is a defence of constructionism as the necessary point of view that sociology has to contribute to the debate on the natural environment. It aims to clarify the debate on realism versus constructivism by distinguishing events, operational models and cognized models.
Events are pre-social.
This process is regulated by cognized models which contain both social and empirical knowledge. The role of sociologists and sociology is to observe the difference between the performance of a society and the available knowledge on nature, i.e. the operational models the society has. Merleau-Ponty claimed that the European identity is in crisis. This article argues that his remarks on Europe and its crisis can be understood only in relation to Edmund Husserl s late writings on the state of the European sciences. Merleau-Ponty s discussion on Europe is an elaboration of Husserl s arguments.