ABSTRACT
The social sciences pervade the quotidian life of ordinary people. This chapter discusses that every area from policy analysis, communication studies, urban affairs, social welfare, or any number of subject areas that touch the human condition are subject to the methods and theories of social science. Even such a concentration of communications is a source of social science potential to those who live "Outside the Beltway" in America. A wave of instantaneous and immediate gratification has affected social science in particular, making it subject to a crude empiricism that serves the ends of know-nothings. Social science came to fruition in a context that offered us a bundle of values enshrined by the Revolution and Enlightenment. The chapter aims to disentangle that double tradition and place social science at the service of either partisan politics or objective analysis.
