Two versions of methodological individualism and three versions of methodological holism are critically analysed and, as a result, methodological reductionism is postulated. In ontological respects it assumes that social reality is not a homogeneous arrangement, that it is characterised by discontinuity of its properties, and that there exist areas in social reality called levels, which means that this conception is decidedly holistic. In methodological respects, methodological reductionism distinguishes explanations of the first degree, i.e., `one-level' explanations from explanations of the second degree, ultimate explanations, i.e., the ones in which the explanans refer to laws and statements related to phenomena from a different level from those to which the explanandum refers. These are reductionistic explanations but not in the traditional sense of the term.
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