In reading the work of older generations of social scientists one thing stands out as fundamentally different from today's writings. Through the mid-twentieth century, most writers who considered the subject were enthusiastic and self-confident about the promise of these fields. Two centuries ago, Condorcet prophesied that his descendants would surpass him in “wisdom as in enlightenment,” acquiring a language “exact and precise,” just as in the natural sciences. A century ago, Comte, Durkheim, Freud, Malinowski, Marshall, and Mark were equally confident – though with somewhat different notions of science in mind. During the postwar era, major intellectual movements like behavioralism, structural-functionalism, and modernization theory seemed once again to inaugurate new epochs of progress in the sciences of man.