INTERFACES OF NATURE AND OF SOCIETY IN THE WORK OF GABRIEL TARDE

Abstract

This article presents the Gabriel Tarde’s monadology and imitation philosophy to show its complementarity in the constitution of a “universal sociological point of view”, the sociological interpretation of all phenomena, material (vibratory), biological (hereditary) and human (imitative). On the one hand Tarde establishes a neo-monadology by opening Leibniz's closed monads. The open monads constitutes, through their mutual possessions, the agreements and harmonies that Leibniz explained by the system of pre-established harmony. These agreements are monadic societies of many types who explain the constitution of any phenomenon. On the other hand Tarde tries, through its imitation philosophy, to provide a scientific substrate to an emerging sociology, taking the imitation as the anthropological aspect of an associative activity that is present in the entire cosmos. Thus, trying to purify to depurate the social science’s own subject, Tarde find a kind of causality that, for the clarity by which she offers itself to the observer on the human societies, is extended to the entire nature, illuminating the obscure and inaccessible background in which the monadic associations take place.