Social science and social physics

Abstract

Social science was born with the ambition to be social physics. In the hands of Galton, Pearson, and their successors, it became instead a search for causal explanations that are of a different logical kind from the explanations provided by celestial mechanics. Many critics of social science continue to demand that the social sciences produce systematic theories explaining social phenomena from general laws. The demand is inappropriate, and is not satisfied by many sciences that provide causal explanations without providing general laws. The unity of the sciences derives from a common conception of rational inquiry, rather than from sameness of technique or theoretical structure.