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Sociology is a two-level science that articulates theory and empirical materials. As such, it needs as much theory to build the data it works on, as data to limit its theoretical reflection. It is also a necessarily critical science that breaks with common sense and destroys illusions about the social world. But the challenge it faces is its current ability to produce general theories despite empirical constraints, competition between regional theories and the social division of scientific work. A synthetic theoretical formula in the field of action theories is presented in conclusion.