In other words, he was trying to maintain the scientific rigour of positivism, while acknowledging the necessity of the "subjective dimension" of human action incorporated in hermeneutic types of sociological theorizing.
As such, Parsons' theory stands at least with one foot in the sphere of hermeneutics and similar interpretive paradigms, which become particularly relevant when the question of "ends" must be considered within systems of action-orientation.
Also, his use of the term "structural functionalism", generally understood as a characterization of his theory, was used by Parsons in a special context to describe a particular stage in the methodological development of the social sciences.
This is one of the reasons why Parsons established a careful division between cultural and social system, a point he highlighted in a short statement that he wrote with Alfred Kroeber,[4] and is expressed on his AGIL paradigm.
For Parsons, adaptation, goal attainment, integration and latency form the basic characteristics of social action, and could be understood as a fourfold function of a cybernetic system where the hierarchical order is L-I-G-A.