Thinking with the Coleman boat

The aim of this article is to provide a rational reconstruction of the diagram as a tool for social scientific theorizing. I will show how Coleman uses the diagram and how it can be employed as a tool for theoretical thinking. I will also demonstrate how it can be used to clarify the nature of the micro-macro challenge in social explanation. The structure of the article is as following. Section 2 will describe the diagram and its elements. Section 3 will show various ways in which Coleman used the diagram in his work. Section 4 discusses more systematically issues related to the interpretation of the diagram, and Section 5 will provide a diagnosis of some recent interpretations of the diagram. Finally, Section 6 focuses on some important limitations of the diagram