Rancte ly Collins Fevr Sectelogtee! Thad tins Crfarel UncebioK Phess (Ge Prologue: The Rise of the Social Sciences* Social science derives from a social base. In this statement there are two paradoxes. Science means knowledge about the tive world that is true because that is the way things are, not based, determined by the society in which least true enough so that one can wi Ina sense that is what this book is about. The four soc traditions have each played a part in uncovering the laws by which social ideas are determined. From the conflict tradition, we discern the dynamics of ideology, legitimacy, the conditions of mobilization of self- terested groups, and the economics of culture, For the con- flict tradition, ideas are weapons, and their dominance is de- termined by the distribution of social arid economic resources. “The prologue gives a soca4 FOUR SOCIOLOGICAL TRADITIONS From the rationallutilitarian tradition, we learn of the limited nature of human capacities for processing information, about bounded rationality and the paradoxes of cognitive choice From the Durkheimian tradition, we learn of social rituals that create not only solidarity, but also the symbols that we use for thinking. Our minds are made up of ideas infused with moral Power by the groups to which we belong. Our social member- ships determine what we believe is real, and they place a moral sanction on the necessity of believing it and a moral condemn, tion on doubting these accepted beliefs From the microinteracionist tradition, we learn that society is in the mind itself. Our conversations and practical en- counters of everyday life construct our sense of socal reality. The four sociological traditions, then, are among other things sociologies of knowledge, and they turn a social determin ism on their own foundations. The four traditions themselves are subject to each other's laws: knowledge founded on ideo! gy, rational limits of rationality, truth coming from ritual, and the social construction of reality. How is this possible? Ultimately the conundrum can be addressed, I think, by the methods of philosophy and mathematics (deriving from Bertrand Russell, Kurt Gadel, and Ludwig Wittgenstein) that distinguish various levels of referential statements, But this Rot a work of philosophy. I make no effort to solve the para. doxes, only to illustrate them. The chapters of this book serve up the contents of these four theoretical traditions as they have developed over the last cen- tury and a half. In the prologue, we turn the sociological eye on the conditions that have shaped their foundations Social Thought in the Agrarian Empire Ideas always have their carriers. In the agrarian empires that make up most of world history from the thitd millennium ac up through medieval Europe, there is little in the way of dis: tinct intellectual groups with their own communities. In the empires of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, India, China, and Ja. Pan, there were literate classes: mostly priests, government officials, and some merchants. These classes developed some knowledge of astronomy, engineering, and mathematics, and PROLOGUE: THE RISE OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 5 some of them created elaborate religious philosophies. In gen- eral, however, these forms of thought were tied to practical or religious activities: knowledge, especially of the social world, was not sought as an interest in its own right. Here and there we find outstanding individual thinkers who touched on social matters—Confucius, or the Machiavellian statesman of ancient India, Kautilya—and no doubt there were worldly wise men and women whose names we have never heard because their thought was not passed on. But this is exactly the problem: social thought develops only if carried by a community that preserves earlier contributions and builds on them. Lacking ‘communities dedicated to this purpose, little social science has come down to us from these civilizations. Only in a crude form of history—mainly chronicles of the reigns of kings compiled by government or religious officials—do we find the beginning of a cumulative investigation of society. For any objective social knowledge to develop, two things had to happen. First, societies (or at least parts of them) had to ‘become rationalized—in Max Weber's term, disenchanted. This began to occur in the large agrarian empires of antiquity in which the practical matters of commerce and government ad- tration created a more matter-of-fact attitude towards the world. But practical necessities by themselves are only a small aid to social thought because it is possible to develop practical know-how without any conscious understanding of general principles. Practical skills can coexist with al social myths and misconceptions. The second cond fore, was the rise of a group of intellectual special could create a social community of their own—an intellectual community—within which the search for knowledge in its own right could receive support. We will be concerned, then, with tracing the rise of such intellectual communities and wi looking at both their internal structures and their relations with the larger societies that surrounded them. It has been difficult to create any social science: far more difficult than creating the natural sciences. Although the realms of physics, chemistry, astronomy, biology, and the rest of the natural world were at one time permeated by religious myths, on the whole it has been relatively uncontroversial to replace them with a technical science. It is true Galileo was6 FOUR SOCIOLOGICAL TRADITIONS condemned by the Catholic Church and Darwin's theory of evolution stirred up public controversy, but for the most part these sorts of incidents have been exceptional. Not so for social thinkers. For them the pressure of social orthodoxy has been 30 Breat that intellectual heresies have had a hard time being for. ‘mulated or even entering intellectuals’ minds this reason, not because the social sciences are “younger” or the subject matter intrinsically so much more difficult or inde- terminate, that the natural sciences came first, Hence, the first fold of the twofold argument: how politics, religion, and edu- cation had to mesh in just the right way so that an intellectual community could arise with enough autonomy So that social science questions could be addressed at all. The first systematic efforts at social thought were pro: duced in the Greek city-states in the 500s n.c. Ancient Greek civilization occupies a prominent place in the history of Wes erm thought because it was here that for the first time a fairly distinct intellectual community arose that was not subordinate to government or religion. Greek society arose out of relatively Primitive tribes on the borders of the great Middle Eastem empires, Protected by the geopolitical conditions of the time, they were able to acquire the wealth and culture of their more advanced neighbors without their oppressively centralized governments and religions. The Greeks retained the crude de- mocracy of tribal war coalitions and the myriad local religious cults that went along, sth them, When Oriental literacy and its accompanying knowledge flooded into this situation of religious and politic there sprang up a number of Greek inte Groups around such philosophers as Thales, Pythagoras, the Sophists, Socrates, and Plato were the most famous. In one sense they were innovative religious cults that added rational. ized knowledge to the rituals of earlier forms of worship. But these schools were also political factions within the politics of the city-states; and they were a source of income for trav teachers who taught the skills of argument to would-be politi nwyers (since everyone argued his own case before the assembly of the city-state). The key feature of this situation was the competition that resulted owing to the pres- PROLOGUE: THE RISE OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 7 ence of many intellectuals selling their wares to the public. Because they were free intellectual entrepreneurs, not taking orders in a priestly or government hierarchy, there was no ilt-in bias towards maintaining tradition. Competition with others meant intellectuals had to develop new ideas and im- prove them against rivals’ criticism. During the time when the ‘ity-states flourished, there was the unparalleled situation of a free intellectual community with many markets to exploit; the result was a period of intellectual vigor, which subsequent history has regarded as a Golden Age. The roots of modem philosophy and science are found in this period; here, too, we find the beginnings of social science. ‘The first systematic consideration of society is found in the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle. To be sure it is primarily concemed with the evaluative question of what form the best society should take rather than with an explanation of why things exist as they are; but this is what we might expect from an intellectual group that also aspired to play a role within Greek politics. At the same time their thought was more int. lectual than that of other politicians. In the next generation after Plato, his pupil Aristotle provided the first example of ‘empirical analysis when he collected the constitutions of doz- ens of Greek cities and attempted to state the conditions under which they were ruled by kings, aristocracies, or democracies, Aristotle was not only concerned with value questions, but also with developing a system of knowledge. The crucial factor may be in the structure of the school that he organized: whereas Plato's school was intended to train government leaders, Aris- totle's was primarily intended to train other intellectuals. Aris- totle’s form of organization itself led him to systematize, and its intemal insulation from immediate political goals led to a greater emphasis on knowledge for its own sake. Aristotle's sociology and economics were promising but ru- dimentary. The finest achievement of Greek social science was the creation of history as we know it: that is to say, serious narrative history. In the same period when the Sophists and the ‘other philosophical schools were engaged in their most vigorous debates, the same intellectual marketplace encouraged retired politicians and generals like Thucydides and Herodotus to write