D

DATA BANKS AND

DEPOSITORIES

CONCEPT AND HISTORY OF DATA-BANKS

The tradition of thought that gave rise to the social
sciences was based on the quest to understand the
laws or regularities governing the emerging indus-
trial societies with democratic political regimes.
The political and economic revolutions that were
shaking the world substituted the relative predicta-
bility of the traditional ways of handling power
and production with the disconcerting uncertain-
ties of political consensus and the new market of
commodities.

Finding such laws was not easy. The model for
scientific inquiry established by the successful en-
deavors in the various fields of physical and natu-
ral sciences was not applicable to social science
research. For a period social scientists believed
that the complexity of the social object and the
immaturity of the field were responsible for the
failure of the natural science model. Social scien-
tists gradually became aware, however, that the
epistemological foundations of the social sciences
were different: in practical terms, because creating
an experimental situation in social matters is ex-
tremely difficult; and in theoretical terms, because
society is a moving target, readily reacting to
changes in circumstances. In the end, mainstream
social scientists learned to live with these difficulties.

The Newtonian challenge of formulating hy-
potheses, collecting the relevant data, and accept-
ing only those hypotheses that fit observational

data, has been in one way or another the stimulus

and the standard of advances in knowledge in the

many fields that later composed the social sci-

ences. The systematic collection of empirical ob-

servations has been the ballast that has kept mod-

ern social sciences from drowning in second-rate

philosophy or outright ideology. Numerous social

researchers and thinkers have stood up to the

challenge of providing reliable observations on

the social world. (Since every observer is also a

member of society, it is not easy to stand aside and

look at it from a fixed point of view.)

In retrospect it is understandable that differ-

ent paths to the common goal of collecting system-

atic reliable data were tested with various meth-

odological and technical tools, not always being

understood as part of the same endeavor. In the

latest bout of cultural dominance of Marxist theo-

ries, Karl Marx and his school were viewed as

‘‘grand theorists’’ squarely opposed to the ‘‘ab-

stract empiricism’’ of contemporary sociology. But

this was a misconception that completely over-

looked the many years spent by Marx painstaking-

ly collecting data on industrial society, and by

desire to be a scientist like Charles Darwin—to

whom he dedicated the book produced by his

gigantic research effort, Das Kapital.

Despite the apparent confusion and turmoil,

there was an underlying paradigm. Social sciences

had to be empirical. No matter how radically

critical and antipositivistic have been the episte-

mological conclusions of the various Methodenstreiten,

the mainstream has resisted the idea of a data-free