The tradition of sociological discourse at the University of California at Berkeley antedates departmentalization by-more than seven decades. Berkeley’s sociology is treated in this article as a dialogue with the ghost of Comte, embracing the works of Joseph Le Conte, Josiah Royce, Frederick Teggart, and Herbert Blumer. That dialogue ultimately produced a prolegomena to a phenomenological theory of social change that has yet to be fully developed. The central concepts of this incipient theory of social change are “release and reverie.” (...) The dimensions and potentiality for this theory are elaborated, and the contribution of Berkeley’s sociology to macrosociological issues is indicated. (shrink)