Further Remarks about Early Uses of the Term "Social Science"

Abstract

In a note, The Earliest Use of Term 'Social Science ', which appeared in this Journal,' Prof. Peter R. Senn observed that reference in Oxford English Dictionary, which places first use in English of term social science as occurring in 1846 in George Herbert Lewes' Biographical History of Philosophy, is inaccurate. Prof. Senn pointed out that John Stuart Mill had previously used term in an article which appeared in October 1836, while in French Sismondi had used social sciences (sciences sociales) in title of a book which also appeared in 1836. Although Prof. Senn believes that there is some possible doubt that Mill references were earliest in English, he concludes that evidence now indicates that Mill and Sismondi references . . . are earliest both in English and in French and that they occurred in same year, 2 that both writers arrived at term independently, and that Sismondi reference marks earliest established use of term in any language. Prof. Senn was correct in suspecting that term had been used earlier. Indeed, far from being used for first time in 1836, both term and concept appear to have been fairly well known in both French and English languages by that time. In French, Charles Fourier used term as early as 1808 in Introduction to his Theorie des quatre mouvemens et des destine6es gene'rales. Maintaining that moral and political whose theories were incompatible with experience, had been discredited in 1793, Fourier offered in their place a still unknown social science (une science sociale encore inconnue). 3 Among Saint-Simonians concept of a science of society was considerably older than term. Beginning with his first book, Lettres d'un habitant de Geneve (1803), Henri de Saint-Simon was concerned with application to study of society of laws similar to those of physical and biological sciences. All sciences, Saint-Simon observed, had passed from a conjectural through a semi-conjectural to a positive stage. He insisted that physiologists must follow suit and expel metaphysicians from their ranks. Saint-Simon coined various terms which either included or designated study of society, the physics of organized bodies as against physics of brute bodies,' 4 moral and political 5