ABSTRACT
The idea of developing social knowledge for the purpose of social betterment took the form in which we still know it today during the Enlightenment. In many respects, the American and French revolutions were a culmination of that development and the fi rst large-scale “application” of modern social and political theory. At the same time, the revolutions were often interpreted as having brought about a social situation in which good social knowledge would permit the gradual but incessant amelioration of social life. The ways of thinking of the social sciences were also created in that context (Heilbron, Magnusson, and Wittrock 1998; see also Therborn 1976; Hawthorn 1976).1
