Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 Introduction: Writing the History of Social Science
- PART I SCIENCES OF THE SOCIAL TO THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY
- PART II THE DISCIPLINES IN WESTERN EUROPE AND NORTH AMERICA SINCE ABOUT 1880
- PART III THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
- PART IV SOCIAL SCIENCE AS DISCOURSE AND PRACTICE IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LIFE
- 30 The Uses of the Social Sciences
- 31 Managing the Economy
- 32 Management and Accounting
- 33 Polling in Politics and Industry
- 34 Social Science and Social Planning During the Twentieth Century
- 35 Social Welfare
- 36 Education
- 37 The Culture of Intelligence
- 38 Psychologism and the Child
- 39 Psychiatry
- 40 Gender
- 41 Race and The Social Sciences
- 42 Cultural Relativism
- 43 Modernization
- Index
- References
34 - Social Science and Social Planning During the Twentieth Century
from PART IV - SOCIAL SCIENCE AS DISCOURSE AND PRACTICE IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LIFE
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
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Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 Introduction: Writing the History of Social Science
- PART I SCIENCES OF THE SOCIAL TO THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY
- PART II THE DISCIPLINES IN WESTERN EUROPE AND NORTH AMERICA SINCE ABOUT 1880
- PART III THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
- PART IV SOCIAL SCIENCE AS DISCOURSE AND PRACTICE IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LIFE
- 30 The Uses of the Social Sciences
- 31 Managing the Economy
- 32 Management and Accounting
- 33 Polling in Politics and Industry
- 34 Social Science and Social Planning During the Twentieth Century
- 35 Social Welfare
- 36 Education
- 37 The Culture of Intelligence
- 38 Psychologism and the Child
- 39 Psychiatry
- 40 Gender
- 41 Race and The Social Sciences
- 42 Cultural Relativism
- 43 Modernization
- Index
- References
Summary
The social sciences, in broadly their contemporary shapes, emerged after the American and French Revolutions. They offered a variety of ways of dealing with the new postrevolutionary political situation, which enabled, and indeed obliged, human beings to create their own rules for social action and political order. It has been a part of the intellectual tradition of the social sciences from their beginnings to contribute to making the social world predictable in the face of modern uncertainties, or, in the stronger version, to reshape it according to a master plan for improvement.
The general idea of providing and using social knowledge for government and policy purposes was certainly not new. The cameral and policy sciences of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were designed for use by an absolute ruler; the very name “statistics” reflects the fact that it was considered science for governmental purposes. The postrevolutionary situation, however, was crucially different in two respects. On the one hand, a much more radical uncertainty had been created by the commitment, even if often a reluctant one, to self-determination of the people, which appeared to limit the possibility of predictive knowledge. On the other hand, this radical openness had been accompanied by a hope for the self-organization of society and its rational individuals, so that the search for laws governing society and human actions emerged beyond – and to some extent instead of – the desire for the increase of factual knowledge of the social world.
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- The Cambridge History of Science , pp. 591 - 607Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003
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