Modernism and the social sciences

Abstract

The modern “social sciences” did not begin to emerge as a cluster of relatively coherent disciplines until the end of the nineteenth century. It was only during the twentieth century that many of them became housed in distinct university departments with their own appointments, bolstered by professional associations and journals, and legitimized by their own norms. The modern social sciences arose as part of a dramatic intellectual shift. Whereas the nineteenth century had been dominated by developmental historicisms that were rooted in romantic and organic concerns with life, creativity, and change, the twentieth century was increasingly dominated by formal types of social knowledge that relied on models, correlations, and classifications. Modernism needs to be distinguished from modernity. Modernity and modern history can stand in contrast to ancient and medieval history. Modernity can also be used to refer to the historical period that has come after the Enlightenment. In contrast to these uses of the word “modernity,” “modernism” usually refers to literary, artistic, and architectural movements dating from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Modernists rejected much of their nineteenth-century heritage. Many of them believed that urban industrial societies required new cultural forms and new types of knowledge. Some of them challenged the certainty and confidence that had characterized so much of Enlightenment and romantic thinking. Others among them wanted to remake their world using new scientific and technical knowledge. Although modernism is mainly associated with literary and artistic movements, it is now widely recognized that these movements were part of a broader cultural shift that was also found in the social and natural sciences. Modernists approached knowledge in atomistic and analytic ways. They broke up wholes and narratives. They focused on units and their place in abstract schemas. They generally relied less on historical explanations than on formal ones. Even when they did appeal to history, it was to find evidence or cases that supported or illustrated more formal mechanisms and causes. It is important to emphasize that this book does not address the generally heated and unhelpful debates about postmodernism. The aim is not to first derive a concept of modernism from the contrast with postmodernism and then to impose this concept back on the past.