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Quotes from Discrepancies among the Social Sciences — William H. McNeill

1917–2016 Canada

← All quotes by William H. McNeill

7 quotes

Categories of understanding along with everything else alter as societies change.

Discrepancies among the Social Sciences (1981)

Social science is itself part of the social experience it seeks to interpret and explain.

Discrepancies among the Social Sciences (1981)

I do not insist that I am right: I merely think so.

Discrepancies among the Social Sciences (1981)

Predictive social science does not exist. Indeed, it seems to me that it cannot ever exist, since the behaviour to be predicted reacts to and is partly shaped by the words used by the predictors.

Discrepancies among the Social Sciences (1981)

There was a Christian redaction of the historical vision of reality, associated especially with the thought of St. Augustine of Hippo.

Discrepancies among the Social Sciences (1981)

Positivism... may be regarded as a secularized form of the systematic theology which had been considered the crown of all the sciences in medieval European universities.

Discrepancies among the Social Sciences (1981)

So far as I can see, coalescence of faith and truth has not been achieved anywhere in the world, not even in American departments of economics...

Discrepancies among the Social Sciences (1981)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: William H. McNeill (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.