ABSTRACT
Crucial as revolutions have been in the life of most nations, they appear nevertheless like exceptional developments, avalanches that suddenly bury the road on which the travelers are moving. Revolutions tear up the fabric of domestic law and order and inflict occasional wounds on the body politic. Wars are the seamless web and ceaseless wound in international relations. An approach that treats men as if they were planets, and societies as constellations, and that tries to define the peculiar laws of motion of the social universe is certainly plausible. Indeed, it has been followed by many contemporary social scientists. A comprehensive social science cannot avoid taking into account the meaning the action had for the actors. The uses and the limits of social science in helping us to understand issues such as the meaning of war and the freedom of the actors are familiar and obvious.
