Some Concluding Thoughts

Abstract

Thought and writing in the social sciences do not take place in a vacuum. As a result, some social scientists believe that the social sciences are best characterised as the ‘political’ sciences. It is true that the ‘agenda’—of discussion and of research—in the social sciences is often determined by the powerful. However, whether—and how far—their pleas for action rest on solid factual foundations has always seemed to me to be a matter for scientific investigation, rather than a matter for the personal preferences (or the values) of the participants in such debates.