Fashion and Social Science

Extract

Social science writings have one thing in common with products of the artistic spirit—they readily lend themselves to dating by their “stylistic” traits. This is not a preferred manner for dating scientific products. Science, like technology, is generally regarded as cumulative in its development. To the extent that this is so, it is possible to place a scientific work in its historical position by examining the stage of knowledge that it reveals. However, the store of social science knowledge grows very slowly indeed. The result is that much of social science impresses one as being modern more by virtue of various stylistic traits than by demonstrable additions to, or modifications of, our stock of substantive (or methodological) knowledge.