Durkheim, Weber and Parsons and the founding experiences of sociology

It is one of the few unquestioned axioms in sociology that the two founding fathers o f the discipline as we know it are Emile Durkheim and Max Weber. This fact has remained practically unaltered since Parsons had published his seminal work in 1937, in spite of the time that has passed since and the amount of debates to which it gave rise. The only major change was that by now Marx has become generally accepted as the third major founding figure, forming thus a holy trinity, as confirmed by the representative works of Giddens (1976) and Habermas (1984).