Some authors (Schumpeter, Sorokin) consider classes as communities or groupings of families. Others consider them as conditions, positions, or roles assumed in society. Such theoretical uncertainty is followed by a similarly uncertain empirical classification. This confusion probably exists because classes are not ostensible objects but concepts, that is, culturally and mutually constructed cognitive schemas. In order to see classes, scientists have to agree about the culturally framed discourse to use. This has not yet happened. This seems to be the main cause of the endless conflict in the debate on social stratification. This article documents that "class," before becoming a scientific construct, was a "folk category." From ordinary language, "class" reached the social sciences, passing through the natural sciences.
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