The excerpts below illustrate various sorts of propositions and definitions discussed
on pages 2-14 in "Issues and Concepts in the Study of Social Systems." Most
excerpts are from Suicide, by Emile Durkheim.

Look for assertions of: 1) direct and inverse (indirect) relationships; 2) necessary,
sufficient, intervening, and contributing conditions; 3) conceptual and operational
definitions; 4) categorical and hypothetical propositions; 5) uni-lateral, bi-lateral, and dialectical relationships; 6) positive and negative feedback loops in bi-lateral and dialectical relationships;
7) configurations of casual relationships; 8) proximal and distal relationships; and
9) the direction of causal flow.

1. Quoting Esquirol (with whom Durkheim disagrees): "Suicide shows all the
characteristics of mental alienation." (p. 58)

2. Again quoting Esquirol: "A man attempts self-destruction only in delirium..."
(p. 58)

3. "(N)o psychopathic state bears a regular and indisputable relation to suicide."
(p. 81)

4. "(T)he degenerate is more apt to commit suicide than the well man; but he
does not necessarily do so because of his condition. This potentiality of his becomes
effective only through the action of factors which we must discover." (p. 81)

5. "Man prefers to abandon life when it is least difficult." (p. 107)

6. "Imitation exists when the immediate antecedent of an act is the representation of a
like act, primarily performed by someone else; with no explicit or implicit mental
operation which bears upon the intrinsic nature of the act reproduced intervening
between representation and reproduction." (p. 129)

7. "(I)mitation is not an original factor of suicide. It only exposes a state which is the
true generating cause of the act and which probably would have produced its natural
effect even had imitation not intervened" (p. 141)

8. "(W)hen religious intolerance is very pronounced, it often produces an opposite
effect. Instead of exciting the dissenters to repect opinion more, it accustoms them
to disregard it." (p. 156)

9. "(A) religious society cannot exist without a collective credo." (p. 159)

10. "(T)he more extensive the credo the more unified and strong is the society."
(p. 159)

11. "(T)he greater concessions a confessional group makes to individual judgment,
the less it dominates lives, the less its cohesion and vitality." (p. 159)

12. "Man seeks to learn and man kills himself because of the loss of cohesion in his
religious society; he dioes not kill himself because of his learning." (p. 169)

13. "(T)he desire for knowledge wakens because religion becomes disorganized."
(p. 169)

14. "As suicides diminish, family density regularly increases." (p. 199)

15. "(T)he density of a group cannot sink without its vitality diminishing." (p. 201)

16. "(C)ollective force is one of the obstacles best calculated to restrain suicide, its
weakening involves a development of suicide." (p. 209)

17. "Excessive individualism not only results in favoring the action of suicidogenic
causes, but it is itself such a cause. It not only frees man's inclination to do away with
himself from a protective obstacle, but it creates this inclination out of whole cloth
and thus guves birth to a special suicide which bears its mark." (p. 210)

18. "(W)oman can endure life in isolation more easily than man." (p. 215)

19. "...they are crises, that is, disturbances of the collective order." (p. 246)

20. "Every disturbance of equilibrium...is an impulse to voluntary death." (p. 246)

21. "It is not true, then, that human activity can be released from all restraint."
(p. 252)

22. "...more depressed and anxious pregnant teenagers, who perceive their social
relationships to be less satisfying, and who have less knowledge of child development,
have more negative expectations for their infants." J.M. Contreras et al. (1995). Journal
of Applied Developmental Psychology, 16, 283-295.

23. High mother support was associated with more secure infant attachment only for
those adolescents living with partners." S.J. Spieker (1994). Developmental Psychology,
30, 1, 102-111.