“A social world [is] a comprehensive and given reality confronting the individual in a manner analogous to the reality of the natural world… In early phases of socialization the child is quite incapable of distinguishing between the objectivity of natural phenomena and the objectivity of the social formations… The objective reality of institutions is not diminished if the individual does not understand their purpose or their mode of operation…He must ‘go out’ and learn about them, just as he must learn about nature.”

—  Peter L. Berger, book The Social Construction of Reality

Source: The Social Construction of Reality, 1966, p. 59-61

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Peter L. Berger45
Austrian-born American sociologist 1929–2017

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