The following paper explores standards within sociological theory from the perspective
of system theory. It claims that there is still the tendency within social sciences of
working with unsatisfying segregated approaches. I argue that this tendency is
caused by the following factors: on the one hand, this is the result of a self-image of
many social-scientific theories and approaches, which is based on more or less selfreflected
and conscious ascribing itself to social functional systems outside science.
On the other hand, it is the result of a lack of interdisciplinarity within sociology which
shows itself not only through the fact that sociology’s (and its subfields’) objects of investigation
are observed from a system outside science, but also through automatically
relating them to the corresponding sociological (sub-)fields’ systems level without
looking further. The following paper explores this aforementioned process – using
research on extremism and terrorism as examples. The conclusion so far is that to
this day parts of sociology don’t take note of the main advantages of their essential
and unique feature: their capability to investigate a diversity of objects and levels of
observation. This paper argues that using a theoretical approach that is based on interdisciplinarity
and second-order observation might offer a solution to this problem.