ABSTRACT
Control could be the central notion for the social and behavioral sciences, meaning that professionals trained in one of those fields can describe and think about all or virtually all of the field's subject matter in terms of control. Although the search for an ultimate cause of human behavior may never end, many scientists and philosophers appear to regard the search as sterile. The notion of predictive power has been explicated at length to identify, as the second major disclaimer, an epistemological issue that no arguments or theories about control can resolve. Perhaps that recognition may prompt some humanists in sociology to rethink their opposition to the criterion; but, to state the major disclaimer again, no argument or theory about control can resolve the epistemological issue in question. The subject is especially relevant for sociology, which has an astonishing variety of unit terms.
