By its very existence, sociology presupposes the overcoming of the false opposition arbitrarily erected by subjectivists and objectivists. Sociology is possible as an objective science because of the existence of external relationships which are necessary and independent of independent wills, and perhaps unconscious (in the sense that they are not revealed by simple reflection), and which can only be grasped by the indirect route of observation and objective experimentation; in other words, because subjects are not in possession of the meaning of the whole of their behavior as immediate conscious data, and because their actions always encompass more meanings than they know or wish, sociology cannot be a purely introspective science attaining absolute certainty simply by turning to subjective experience, and, by the same token, it can be an objective science of the objective (and the subjective), i.e. an experimental science, experimentation being, in the words of Claude Bernard “the only mediation beween the objective and the subjective”.