Text: The rigor and exactitude of social sciences offer real advantages, but it is easy to overstate them. Social science is quantitative, precise, analytically sophisticated — and thus seems far superior to the educated guesswork of drawing lessons from history. Yet the models of social science are quantifiable and analytically manipulable only because of their reductionism — that is, because of all they leave out. The model is not reality: its relationship to reality is analogical. Accordingly, when we are presented with two different models that yield very different conclusions, how do we determine which is the better fit to current circumstances? In exactly the same way that we decide whether this or that historical precedent is more relevant — by judging which analogy is the more apt. Social science provides us with new concepts and new techniques as the basis for making analogies, but ultimately the best social scientists, like the best historians, practice the art of developing, refining, and exhibiting well-informed good judgment.
Text: The rigor and exactitude of social sciences offer real advantages, but it is easy to overstate them. Social science is quantitative, precise, analytically sophisticated — and thus seems far superior to the educated guesswork of drawing lessons from history. Yet the models of social science are quantifiable and analytically manipulable only because of their reductionism — that is, because of all they leave out. The model is not reality: its relationship to reality is analogical. Accordingly, when we are presented with two different models that yield very different conclusions, how do we determine which is the better fit to current circumstances? In exactly the same way that we decide whether this or that historical precedent is more relevant — by judging which analogy is the more apt. Social science provides us with new concepts and new techniques as the basis for making analogies, but ultimately the best social scientists, like the best historians, practice the art of developing, refining, and exhibiting well-informed good judgment.