First published in 1998.This is Volume XIV of eighteen in the Sociology of Behaviour and Psychology series. This text is concerned with sociological inquiry into society and nature. Written in 1946, it investigates the idea that society and nature, if conceived of as two different systems of elements, are the results of two different methods of thinking and are only as such two different objects. The same elements, connected with each other according to the principle of causality, constitute nature; connected with each other according to another, namely, a normative, principle, they constitute society

Part 1 Primitive Conception of Nature; Chapter 1 Primitive Consciousness; Chapter 2 The Social Interpretation of Nature; Chapter 3 The Interpretation of Nature According to the Principle of Retribution; Part 2 Greek Religion and Philosophy; Chapter 4 The Idea of Retribution in Greek Religion; Chapter 5 The Law of Causality and the Principle of Retribution in the Greek Philosophy of Nature; Part 3 Modern Science; Chapter 6 The Law of Causality in Modern Natural Science; Chapter 7 Natural and Social Science;