ABSTRACT
Is European social science immune to the impact of the sharp, relative decline in civilized power that the West has experienced since the catastrophe of 1914-18? Is the Western scholar of Asia meeting his obligations to help to prepare his fellow Westerners psychologically and intellectually to live in a world in which the two largest economies may be China and India? Is Japan’s post-war miracle the stuff of which social scientific revolutions are made? The academic response, outside Asian studies, to the competitive challenge being mounted by East Asians today does not inspire confident answers to these questions. Indeed, the implied failure casts doubt on the powers of Western political and social sciences, as sciences, to capture reality.
