Without belittling its scientific procedures, Professor Berger stresses the humanistic affinity of sociology with history and philosophy. It is a discipline which encourages a fuller awareness of the human world, with the purpose of bettering it. The author's comments on the social institutions which men have shaped and on the men whom these institutions, in their turn, have moulded (together with his outline of the contributions of such major sociologists as Weber, Durkheim, Veblen and Mead, among others) tell the reader just what sociology is and define the larger purpose of this social self-consciousness.