WORMS, RENÉ

WORMS, RENÉ (1869–1926), French social scientist. He taught chiefly economic subjects at the University of Caen, the École des Hautes Études Sociales, the Institut Commercial, and the École des Hautes Études Commerciales in Paris. Worms' importance for sociology rests largely with his organizational activities. He was the founder of the Revue internationale de sociologie (1892), the Institut International de Sociologie (1893), and the organizer of the annual sociological congresses, as well as the Bibliothèque Sociologique Internationale. Worms and the institutions which he helped to create became the major points of resistance against the prevailing Durkheimian influences in French sociology. As an author, he started by standing for an organicistic approach to society but modified his position later in life.

The best-known work of Worms's organicistic period is Organisme et société (1896); others are Eléments de philosophie scientifique et de philosophic morale (1891), Psychologie collective et psychologie individuelle (1899), Philosophie des sciences sociales, 3 vols. (1903–07; 2^nd ed. 1913–20), Les principes biologiques de l'évolution sociale (1910), La sociologie; sa nature, son contenu, ses attaches (1921), as well as numerous articles in the Revue internationale de sociologie.

bibliography:

A. Ouy, in: Revue internationale de sociologie, 33 (1925), 577–80; C.M. Case and F. Woerner, in: Sociology and Social Research, 13 (1929), 403–25.

[Werner J. Cahnman]