This article examines the connections among heuristics, the epistemological and ontological presuppositions that underlie theorizing, and substantive explanations in sociology. It develops and contrasts three heuristics: “doing as knowing” (DK), “categorizing as knowing” (CK), and “praxis as knowing” (PK). These are each composed of four dimensions: the theory of knowledge, the theory of reality, the theory of the growth of knowledge, and the theory of knowledge producers. The article then shows the importance of heuristics for empirical work by demonstrating how they shape explanations in the sociological subfield of the historical sociology of knowledge. The essay draws two main conclusions: it argues that PK offers a more useful basis for developing explanations in sociology than either of the two alternatives (DK and CK) that currently shape substantive work; furthermore, it claims that the exposition of heuristic assumptions is an important task for sociology.

中文翻译：

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变得真实：社会学知识中的启发式方法

本文考察了启发式、作为理论基础的认识论和本体论预设以及社会学中的实质性解释之间的联系。它发展并对比了三种启发式方法：“做为知道”（DK）、“分类为知道”（CK）和“作为知道的实践”（PK）。它们分别由四个维度组成：知识论、现实论、知识增长论和知识生产者论。然后，文章通过展示启发式如何塑造知识历史社会学的社会学子领域的解释，展示了启发式对经验工作的重要性。文章得出两个主要结论：它认为，与目前形成实质性工作的两种替代方案（DK 和 CK）中的任何一个相比，PK 为发展社会学解释提供了更有用的基础；此外，它声称启发式假设的阐述是社会学的一项重要任务。