ABSTRACT
As with almost everything British, sociology north of the English Channel has followed a rather idiosyncratic trajectory. The path dependencies it implied continued to define its history until the late 1970s, when there was a turn that changed its international image. This course is due to a great extent to the imbalance between empirical analysis and theory. British empiricism caused a continuously returning problem of self-esteem among the British social scientists whenever they sought to compare themselves with other more glamorous theoretically oriented intellectual communities. They had often to realize that they could not attract the interest of the wider educated public with provocative ideas on equal terms with theorists from the continent (Anderson 1968; Hawthorn 1976). There have been always British scholars and administrators among the forerunners with significant contributions in social research (Jahoda et al. 1980; Maus 1967), but grand theory and its relationship to philosophy was not always up to a comparable standard. The opposition to historical metaphysics and philosophical transcendentalism by practically minded social researchers, who preferred evidence-based policies to utopian deliberations, has been praised by many advocates of liberal and reformist politics. But others, since the times of Matthew Arnold, saw in this anti-intellectualism; an attitude that could have detrimental effects on cultural development. This might have been an exaggerated view. But one thing is for sure: the dominant anti-philosophical climate among social scientists and commentators of social issues turned out to be a disadvantage. Reflection on social issues were, especially in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, recorded in essays, novels, plays and history books which did not deliver the philosophical epigrams that usually promote influential ideas. Although eminent Britons of the eighteenth century had been forerunners in preparing the theoretical ground for later developments, when sociology became a well-respected discipline, they were almost forgotten; thus they did not occupy the prominent place they deserved in the history of sociology. For instance, very few people within the sociological communities referred a century later to the significance of main figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, such as Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson and John Millar, and to their foundational role in what was to become modern sociology.1 Herbert Spencer’s, as well as John Stuart Mill’s, contributions to sociological thinking could not repair this loss of fame. The achievements of two famous Germans, Karl Marx and Friedrich 392Engels, who produced highly influential works in England, by using English data and research methods inspired by the British tradition of social statistics, was not put on the record of their host country. It is true that they wrote almost exclusively in German and that they were for a long time struggling for their ideas outside the established networks. The fact that Friedrich Engel’s work on the condition of the English working class could be ex post regarded as one of the most important early genuinely sociological works, as well as Marx’s pioneer work in structural social science, both having been produced in England, could not improve Britain’s position in the history of sociology. The francophone social philosophers have been more successful. Among the writings of the eighteenth century, J.J. Rousseau’s essay on inequality is recalled more often than other similar treatises. And a Frenchman, August Comte, has coined the name of the discipline, which was about half a century earlier invented by another of his compatriots, the illustrious revolutionary priest Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès.
