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An historian's view of American social science
Author(s) -
Ross Dorothy
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
journal of the history of the behavioral sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.216
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1520-6696
pISSN - 0022-5061
DOI - 10.1002/1520-6696(199304)29:2<99::aid-jhbs2300290202>3.0.co;2-v
Subject(s) - scientism , ideology , american exceptionalism , historicism , exceptionalism , epistemology , politics , sociology , liberalism , enlightenment , power (physics) , social science , environmental ethics , philosophy , political science , law , physics , quantum mechanics
This paper explicates the argument of The Origins of American Science . Starting from my own historical premises and the origin of the social sciences in both historicism and science, I compare the divergent historical orientations of the sociologies of Robert Park and Max Weber. I argue that the inclination of American social science toward scientism and liberalism derives from the national ideology of American exceptionalism. Since this structural feature of American political culture was itself a part of history, I indicate how changes in historical consciousness and politics led American social scientists to reformulate exceptionalism and their disciplines. By the 1920s, their hope of establishing scientific control over, and maintaining the liberal direction of, the fast‐changing national history was embodied in scientism. I close with some thoughts about the continuing power of scientism and exceptionalism since the 1920s and the possibility that an historical, Weberian model of social science could bridge the widening gap between scientistic and hermeneutic wings of the social science disciplines.