ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to clarify both the nature and the roles of the social sciences. When the University Grants Committee (UGC) set up a subcommittee to advise on social sciences, the initial members were set up to represent economics, economic history, political science, anthropology, sociology, geography and Scotland. The Heyworth Committee — whose 1965 report led to the foundation of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) — considered that it was concerned with research employing the methods used by social sciences 'as this term is understood in universities'. One major debate amongst social scientists over the last 50 years has been the extent to which these should be seeking the rigour, replicability and predictive capacity traditionally associated with the natural sciences. The Gulbenkian Commission operated in the period 1994/95 on a rationale. This commission accepts that the 'academic division of labour' in the social sciences causes a number of problems.
