ABSTRACT
This chapter proceeds in two parts: first discusses some broader trajectories and turning points in the evolution of comparative and historical inquiry within the American social sciences. Comparative historical analysis is dubiously aggrandized by its narration as the revival of a classic tradition peopled by a few European intellectuals. Evolutionary positivism and developmental historicism both diffused from Europe to take solid root in late-nineteenth-century American intellectual life. Attention focused first on the claim that comparative historical analysts could-by careful selection of which societies, and which periods of those societies' histories, to compare-set up inductive analyses that approximate the logic of the methods of agreement and difference as laid out in John Stuart Mill's account of experimental inquiry. Finally they also reject the belief that a single, refined theoretical scheme is necessary, or even helpful, to the pursuit of this goal. Interpretive social science stands in basic contrast to such analyses.
