ABSTRACT
There was a distinct period in American sociological history during which civilizational analysis was not only countenanced but actually considered de rigueur. Between 1909 and 1919, presidential addresses before the American Sociological Society abounded with references to the needs, aims, and future of civilization writ large. Benjamin Nelson skillfully links his goal of extending the borders of "comparative historical differential sociology in civilizational perspective" to very concrete settings. Nelson's eye for details is ever present. The struggles of the Jews against their Hellenic and Roman rulers served to preserve rooted solidarities, pieties, and collectivities, he argues, but they also served to inhibit participation in the modernizing quest, except on an ad hoc basis. Nelson is not so much concerned with the origins of science as with the moral commitments of those who advocated science. Faiths, Sciences, and Machines reinforced one another in the development of Western civilization.
