The interregnum

pp. 92-104

in: Stephen P. Turner, The search for a methodology of social science, Berlin, Springer, 1986

Abstract

was the first person to bring the Enlightenment conception of the social sciences to a point sufficient for us fully to understand and appraise it. Subsequent elaboration has added nothing essential to his argument and removed nothing that makes a substantial difference. No one who either favours or opposes the basic claim — the claim that there are social laws just as there are physical laws, and that therefore the structure, procedure, and aims of the social sciences must resemble that of the physical sciences — is likely to have his opinion altered by considering conceptual developments after Mill. All the conceptual information necessary for concluding for, or against, the view which he advocates can be found in his writings (Brown, 1984, p. 5).