ABSTRACT
Comte writing in 1848 claimed that the application of the methods that had triumphed in mathematics and natural science would prevail in politics and produce a science of society (Comte 1848). It was a wide spread belief. In Britain Bentham pressed for the collection of facts to ensure that legislation would produce ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’. In Belgium, Quetelet was examining social issues statistically. Le Play in France was testing theories of the family against their domestic budgets. Engels was social surveying in Manchester. Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto in 1848, the same year that Comte published A General View o f Positivism. There was an Amer ican Statistical Society from 1839 and these existed in many of the large towns in Britain. Theorizing and description have always guided pol icy and practice, and been used to try to change things for the better. The promise of social science and social research was international and irresistible.
