ABSTRACT
The social sciences are an outgrowth of efforts to understand and alleviate practical problems through social reform. The development of social science disciplines is therefore practice-driven, and not, as is mistakenly assumed by those who squat in the shade of the natural sciences, a product of “basic” research. This myth of the basic-to-applied research cycle, together with derivative misconceptions about the role of “social engineering,” was challenged by Paul Lazarsfeld throughout his career (Holzner et al. 1977). In his last published book he urged us to acknowledge the ordinary contexts of practical action which continue to drive the social sciences:
While the social sciences are thus an outgrowth of attempts to understand and alleviate practical problems, they nevertheless represent more than
“the growth of ordinary knowledge writ large” (Popper 1963:216). The social sciences have built upon but have also transformed ordinary knowledge, frequently in ways that produce unhappy results. For every Authoritarian Personality or American Soldier there is at least one Project Camelot, while countless apparently innocuous or incompetent applied research efforts have legitimized bureaucratic interests in the name of science. Indeed, the bulk of social science research appears to have made little if any contribution to improvements in social theory or social practice.
