Social Science and a New Social Order
Abstract
Social Science and a New Social Order SAGE Publications, Inc.1971DOI: 10.1177/002234337100800302 Harry R.Targ Purdue University Lafayette, Indiana 1. Introduction Singer has argued that the functions of social science research are to describe, explain, and predict.' Dominant paradigms in disillusion- social science, since pre-World War Two disillusionment with prescription have presupposed these three functions, and whole disciplines have been guided by them. Theory-building enterprises with the use of sophisticated computer and statistical tools have been developed in the last twenty years at a time when U.S society was making a fundamental commitment to technological, scientific advancement. Particularly the post-Sputnik atmosphere profoundly effected the kinds of problems social scientists consider and the way in which they are studied."3 Since the dramatic escalation of the Vietnam War in 1965 and increasing racial conflicts in urban areas, students and young faculty have begun to re-evaluate the dominant motifs of scientific inquiry; the relationship of knowledge to U.S. foreign policy, the interaction of knowledge and social control, and the adequacy and/or inadequacy of knowledge as agent and guide to social change.4 Recent conflicts in professional social science journals and emerging minority professional association caucuses have resulted in demands for 'a new social science'