Conclusion

Abstract

The object of this book has been to demonstrate the conservative, unsatisfactory nature and consequences of current social theory and to show how the social sciences could be truly informative and transformative. The lack of a progressive dynamic in current social theory involves the assumption that social scientific data are distinct from the data of other forms of explanation. In each manifestation, we find a contradictory division in the categories and criteria of explanation which produces in the social sciences a variety of dualisms. These dualisms are usually recognised as contradictory in the writings of others, yet, at the same time, they are accepted as descriptive of the problems that the social sciences peculiarly must address. Neither aspect of a dualism can be abandoned for the other because the contradictory form sets each as an entailment to the other. Sooner or later, efforts at synthesis are shown to be equally ill-founded and, ultimately, the contradiction, initially argued to be unnecessary, is embraced as definitive.