"In the intellectual condition of the social sciences today, there is so much to do by way of initial 'structuring' (let the word stand for the kind of work I am describing) that much 'empirical research' is bound to be thin and uninteresting.  Much of it, in fact, is a formal exercise for beginning students, and sometimes a useful pursuit for those who are not able to handle the more difficult substantive problems of social science. There is no more virtue in empirical inquiry as such than in reading as such. The purpose of empirical inquiry is to settle disagreements and doubts about facts, and thus to make arguments more fruitful by basing all sides more substantively.  Facts discipline reason; but reason is the advance guard in any field of learning" (The Sociological Imagination, 1959, p. 205).