ABSTRACT
Many observers, including William Ogburn and Daniel Chirot, have noted that social change is not automatic. In contemplating how social change occurs, the focus is usually on moving from what is to what is not yet. The Bolsheviks, and before them the French Jacobins, bemoaned what they considered counterrevolutionaries. Revolutionaries tend to be dreamers. They proselytize for what are described as reforms only to have others discover that they are beguiling fantasies. Conflicts can have both salutary and deleterious effects. They may stimulate people to find common ground or impel them to destroy each other. If social change is to occur, the elements of that change must be capable of modification. Cultural, structural, and institutional factors do not exist in a vacuum. What we humans know derives, in large part, from what others believe. Most people, including social scientists, seldom reflect on the nature of morality.
