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Parsons' project for social theory contrasts with many of the prevailing modes of theoretical endeavour as we enter the twenty-first century. Social theory today is typically fragmented in scope, anti-foundational in temper, riven with epistemological conflict and unsure of its relationship with social and political action. Parsons, by contrast, sought nothing less than the construction of a unified map of the social. His irrepressible usage of the vocabulary of structured systems, determinate input-output relations and boundary interchanges, in these endeavours, contrasts markedly with the anti-canonical iconoclasm of the present day. Parsons, by contrast, is an iconic figure, offering an iconic style of social theory. This aspired to coherence not merely in its internal logic and architecture, but also in its account of the relationship between the social, the metaphysical and the natural worlds.
These wider concerns reflect both his liberal Protestant origins, and early career ambitions to become a biological scientist. These influences underlie Parsons' concern to provide an account of social action, capable of acknowledging both the place of human autonomy driven by ultimate values, and the importance of socialization and forms of structural dependency on the biological organism. His map of the social is therefore positioned between two external environments, the ‘inner’ environment of ultimate meaning and purpose, and the ‘outer’ environment of the natural (physicochemical and organic) worlds.
This perspective on the social means, amongst other things, that Parsons' social theory gives a prominent place to the sociology of values (including religious values), to the sociology of material life (including economic institutions), and to the sociology of health and sickness (including connections between materiality and values). These broad interests were pursued in the Departments of Sociology and Social Relations at Harvard University, where Parsons taught from the early 1930s. There are few social theorists writing today with Parsons' synthetic boldness of interdisciplinary vision. This may partly explain the exaggerated contemporary success of socio-biology in colonizing the territory where biology meets sociology. Parsons, by contrast with most contemporary social theorists, was not content merely to claim that biology is mediated through sociality, a position that leaves the territory vulnerable to occupation by others.
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