The purpose of this essay is to underscore the importance of two related insights that lie at the foundation of sociology and account for its unique contribution to the study of human behavior. The first is that social behavior is constrained by the context in which it occurs. Consequently, any attempt to formulate propositions about social behavior that have wide generalizability is limited by this contextual dependence. The second insight is that contextual factors and the actions of individuals interact in a dynamic and reciprocal manner to influence social events. The nature of this interrelationship must be taken into account when making general statements about social life. Sociologist s aim to make general statements about the behavior of individuals in society. Boudon ( 1989) claims that this "generalizing ambition" takes one of three forms. First, sociologists try to state universal principles about social behavior. Second, they search for evolutionary laws. Third, they hypothesize relationships in the form of structural models. I argue that while each of these approaches provides a useful strategy to further our understanding of social life, they are successful only to the extent that they take into account the context in which the event is embedded. General laws are conditional propositions of the form: if x, then y; that is, factor x is a sufficient condition for the occurrence of factor y. This statement is a deterministic conditional proposition. To take random factors or noise into account, a conditional proposition may be stated in a weaker form: if x, then most likely y. This statement is a probabilistic conditional proposition. Both kinds of conditional propositions are used to generalize widely. Numerous examples of deterministic and probabilistic conditional propositions may be found in sociology. Durkheim argues that if anomie increases, then suicide rates increase. Homans claims that if a person is rewarded for an activity, he or she is more likely to perform that activity. Marx asserts that if oppressed people have nothing to lose, they will revolt. Lipset argues that if a developing nation experiences rapid economic growth and territorial expansion, the nation will gradually