Characteristic transitions in Parsons' theoretical development

In The Structure the discovery of convergence had been documented. Parsons had found that all the recent social theories analysed could be cross-matched with each other. The book's construction emphasized the ‘empirical conclusions’. The Social System, by way of contrast, was constructed along different lines. All the discoveries had been made previously to it. What remained was the task of packing them all into this work: ‘his major exposition’.

Sooner or later Parsons would have had to make his definitive formulation of The Social System. The Structure of Social Action had concluded with the confident proclamation that the foundations for theory-building were soundly laid (T. Parsons 1937a: 775). As we have shown, the primary motivation was not simply a search for high social, or even professional, status for himself. It was an attempt to prove that sociological theory should be given a high priority in the social science professions. There would be some residual benefit to himself in becoming known as the discipline's ‘incurable theorist’, but he had already won a place for himself in the intensely competitive milieu of Harvard and was Chairman of its innovative Department of Social Relations. In the late 1940s he worked to satisfy himself that all the effort was worth it.

We have noted that it was in the transition from a logical to a critical (comparative) analysis of Marshall's theory that Parsons began the process of theoretical refinement which resulted in the major sociological theory of twentieth-century American sociology.