(1) Eriksson, , Samhällsvetenskapens uppkomst. En tolkning ur den sociologiska traditionens perspektiv (Uppsala 1988).Google Scholar

(2) This discussion, conducted primarily by Hume, had, as far as I can see, no practical implications for the causal and empirical sciences of his time. The topic under discussion here had, in contrast, immediate and far-reaching consequences for those sciences.

(3) This assertion demands some comments. It is of course impossible to deny that sociology has built and worked out theories where the causality approaches the abstract type, from Pareto to decision-making theories. This kind of work has, however, always had a minority position in the discipline and has never been able to replace the historical causality. One reason for this is of course that as soon as these theories are to be used outside the experimental room, they have to be translated into historical causality.

(4) This is roughly the same opinion as Tilly, Charles's in Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons (New York, Russel Sage Foundation, 1984), p. 79.Google Scholar

(5) Dugald Stewart, Account of the Life and Writings of Dr Smith, Foreword to Smith, Essays on Philosophical Subjects, edited by Joseph Black & James Hutton (Edinburgh 1795), p. xv.

(6) Smith, , An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations [1776] (Oxford, The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, 1976), p. 10.Google Scholar

(7) Ferguson, , Essay on the History of Civil Society [1767] (Edinburgh 1966), p. 7.Google Scholar

(8) The four stage theory is the basic historical and sociological theory in the works of Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson and John Millar. This theory is discussed in, among others, my earlier mentioned Samhällsvetenskapens uppkomst, and in Meeks, Ronald more historically oriented book Social Science & the Ignoble Savage (Cambridge 1976).Google Scholar

(9) See for example Nisbeth, Robert, The Social Philosophers (1976), esp. ch. 111.Google Scholar

(10) A pamphlet from the Whig-Tory Controversy can show this way of reasoning very clearly: In the last place, the wisdom and design of the first architects of our Government is very apparent, in contriving a Monarchy in the Prince, mixed with Aristocracy in the House of Peers and Democracy in the House of Commons, whereby all the advantages were secured and inconveniences avoided, which are ordinarily to be found in simple and uncompounded states. Cited in Müllenbrock, , Whigs kontra Tories. Studien zum Einfluss der Politik auf die Englische Litteratur den frühen 18ten Jahrhunderts (Heidelberg 1974).Google Scholar

(11) Millar, John, The Origin of the Distinction of Ranks ³ [1779], William Lehmann, John Millar of Glasgow 1735–1801. His life and thought and his contribution to sociological analysis (Cambridge 1960), pp. 165–322, 177.Google Scholar

(12) Today of course Leviathan is discussed as a logical treatise of power. In the eighteenth century, however, the usual way was to confront it as a historical treatise. It is from this point of view Hume critizises it in his essay Of the Original Contract [1748], ap. Humes Ethical Writings (London 1970).

(13) In this context I can not refrain from pointing to Hume's criticism of the contract theory, where he denounces the possibility of a big event contract because of men's incapacity to judge its advantages in advance. Hume concedes that men enter what could be called a contract but not in the way Hobbes has sketched. He does it unconsciously, spontaneously and over time on the basis of ‘that natural appetite betwixt the sexes, which unites them together, and preserves their union’. Hume reformulates, so to speak, the big event contract theory into a small event contract theory. See Hume, , A Treatise of Human Nature [1739], (1973), p. 486.Google Scholar

(14) See Hampson, Norman, The Enlightenment. An evaluation of its assumptions, attitudes and values [1968], (1986), p. 74.Google Scholar

(15) Discourse on Inequality, in Rousseau, , The Social Contract and Discourse (London, Everyman's University Library, 1973), p. 58.Google Scholar

(16) Quotations of Newton from Smith, , The Enlightenment 1687–1776 [1934] (New York 1966), p. 47.Google Scholar

(17) Ferguson, , Essay on the History of Civil Society [1767] (Edinburgh 1966), 6 p.Google Scholar

(18) Ibid., p. 3 [My emphasis].

(19) Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence, p. 14.

(20) This is a somewhat prejudicial simplification, however, as the Enlightenment could show nearly as much cultural pessimism as optimism among its works. As for the four stage authors they were decidedly no optimists for the future, rather fearing the consequences of social progress than rejoicing in them. See for example Samhällsvetenskapens uppkomst, pp. 345–362.

(21) The tendency to connect small event causality with the historical dimension is of course the most common way of conceiving this causality. At the same time it should be observed that it is not the only possibility. The climate theory of Montesquieu is a small event theory as M. does not conceive of any basic or inherent physiological differences between people in different climates. It is rather the case that the climate makes different things with a given physiology. This means that the climate theory is a social theory based not on historical but on environmental small events.

(22) Nota bene, if such old periodizations like the Golden Age, the Silver Age, the Iron Age and so forth are excluded.

(23) Bossuet, , Discours sur l'histoire universelle [1681] (Rouen 1788).Google Scholar

(24) In this capacity he also wrote the book Politique tirée de l'Écriture sainte (Bruxelles 1710).

(25) Bossuet, Discours, p. 5.

(26) This is discussed, though not in terms of big and small events, several times in Samhällsvetenskapens uppkomst; see for example p. 73.

(27) From Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, quoted in Haber, , The Age of the World. Moses to Darwin (Baltimore 1959), pp. 162f.Google Scholar

(28) Samhällsvetenskapens uppkomst, pp. 80–1. A rationalistic model of society is characterized at least by the following points: 1) society is in principle transparent and calculable; 2) the formal institutions are the basic causal agents in society; 3) man and society exists in a genetically and logically accidental relation; 4) society is created to counter the state of nature.

This is obvious contrast to a sociological model of society: 1) society is always and in principle partly unknown because of the spontaneous social processes occurring; 2) the informal institutions have greater causal power than the formal and therefore greater value of explanation; 3) man and society are inextricably related; 4) society has emerged spontaneously.

(29) Smith, , Wealth of Nations (1976), p. 456.Google Scholar

(30) Eriksson, op. cit. pp. 362–379.

(31) Millar, , An Historical View of the English Government. From the settlement of the Saxons to the revolution in 1688 [1783] (third ed., 4 vols: London 1803), I, pp. 373–376.Google Scholar

(32) Ferguson, Essay…, p. 122.

(33) Ibid.

(34) Smith, Lectures of Jurisprudence…, p. 207.

(35) The quotation is based on an interview with Millar presented in Stewart, loc. cit. p. xi.

(36) One example of this is the explanation given by the four stage authors to the Tartar invasions. This kind of warfare and this kind of empires are possible only in the pastoral stage, where people and their belongings are mobile. For a people subsisting on agriculture such migrations are impossible. See Ferguson, Essay…, pp. 103–4.

(37) Ferguson, Essay…, p. 64.

(38) Fielding, , Tom Jones [1748] (Harmondsworth 1973), p. 52.Google Scholar

(39) Eriksson, , The making of a discipline. Steps towards a model of analysis,paper presented at the International Institute of Sociology, 29th World Congress,12–16 June(Rome, Italy).Google Scholar

(40) Marshall, Gordon, Presbyteries and Profits. Calvinism and the development of capitalism in Scotland 1560–1707 (Oxford 1980).Google Scholar

(41) Hobbes, , Leviathan [1651] (London 1972), p. 143.Google Scholar

(42) Locke, , Essay concerning Human Understanding [1690] (London 1973)Google Scholar; and Hume, , An Enquiry concerning the Human Understanding [1748], in Enquiries concerning the Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals, repr. from the 1777 ed., and ed. by Selby-Bigge, L. A. (2nd ed. 1902) (Oxford 1972), pp. 169–323.Google Scholar

(43) Hampson, The Enlightenment, p. 77. Quoted from Maupertuis' Venus Physique.

(44) Ferguson, Essay…, p. 3.

(45) Id. p. 2.

(46) Smith, Wealth…, pp. 14–15.

(47) Ibid. p. 20.

(48) This challenge was of course taken up and furthered by dissenters against the existing society and the prevailing science. Compare for example what Hampson (The Enlightenment p. 229) says about Maupertuis: Maupertuis's genetic theories […] began by recognizing that, since offspring revealed characteristics present by both parents, their genetic structure could not be explained Purely by ovist theories. This was presumably common knowledge amongst stock-breeders, but it ran counter to orthodox scientific opinion and it offered possibilities of scientific investigations which Maupertuis was quick to seize.

(49) Smith, Preserved, The Enlightenment 1687–1776 [1934] (1966), p. 329.Google Scholar

(50) Hampson, The Enlightenment, p. 108.

(51) Ferguson, Essay…, pp. 268–9.

(52) See among others Chitnis, Anand, The Scottish Enlightenment. A social history (London 1976), esp. ch. viGoogle Scholar; Christie, J. R., The origins and development of the Scottish scientific community 1680–1768, History of Science, XII (1974), 122–141CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Steven Shapin, The audience for science in eighteenth century Edinburgh, ibid. 95–121.

(53) See Philipson, N. T., Culture and Society in the Eighteenth Century Province: the case of Edinburgh and the Scottish Enlightenment, in Stone, Lawrence, The University in Society. II: Scotland and the United States from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century (Princeton 1974).Google Scholar

(54) This resulted in the already mentioned Essays on Philosophical Subjects published in Edinburgh five years after the death of Smith.

(55) See Chitnis, The Scottish Enlightenment, esp. ch. vii.

(56) The Linnean biology, for example, was not a time-bound science but presupposed a fixed, everlasting order in nature.

(57) Greene, , Science, Ideology and World View. Essays in the history of evolutionary ideas (Berkeley 1981), p. 47.Google Scholar

(58) For descriptions of this phase in the development of geology see Toulmin, and Goodfield, , The Discovery of Time (1965)Google Scholar, and Haber, , The Age of the World. Moses to Darwin (Baltimore 1959).Google Scholar

(59) Even at the beginning of the century, alternative inklings of small event interpretations existed however, even if they were not elaborated and did not play any role in the development of geology. Hampson exemplifies from Montesquieu's Lettres Persanes: In a much later edition he added at this point [the foreword]: ‘But such destructions are not all violent. We see several parts of the earth grow weary of providing subsistence for men. What do we know as to whether the entire earth has not general causes of exhaustion, slow and imperceptible?’ The Enlightenment, pp. 219 f.

(60) Hutton, Theory of the Earth with Proofs and Illustrations (Edinburgh 1795). This book was preceded by the reading of an Abstract at the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1785 and an article presented in its Transactions from 1788. As, however, Hutton's ability as a writer was not in par with his ability as a geologist, his theory was most widely read in a book by his friend John Playfair, Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth [Edinburgh 1802].

(61) Lyell, Charles, Principles of Geology; being an attempt to explain the former changes of the earth's surface (London 1830).Google Scholar

(62) It is of course a simplification to say that uniformitarianism was completely victorious. What complicated this was the glaciation theory, which obviously violated Hutton's methodological dictum. The final result was however some sort of a compromise where the glaciations were uniformed as a variable geological state. For the development of this compromise see Rupke, Nicolaas, The Great Chain of History. William Buckland and the English School of Geology [1814–1840] (Oxford 1983).Google Scholar

(63) A corroboration of this standpoint can be found in Oberschall, Anthony's article, The Two Empirical Roots of Social Theory and the Probabilistic Revolution, in Krüger, , Gigerenzer, & Morgan, (eds), The Probabilistic Revolution. II: Ideas in the Sciences (Cambridge, Mass., 1986).Google Scholar

(64) The development of the probabilistic theory and use is lucidly presented in the two volumes of Krüger, Gigerenzer & Morgan, op. cit.