THE M ODERN COMPACT BETW EEN SCIENCE AND THE STATE ALLOWS FOR

the flow o f public m oney to research and an expectation th a t politicians will generally no t m eddle w ith the scientific w ork—on condition th a t the science, reciprocally, should stay clear o f politics. That seems at first a harm less constraint, for w hat could be political about the form ation and breakdow n o f atm ospheric ozone, the dynamics o f ocean currents, or the neurological developm ent o f a fetus? Yet in none o f these areas can scientific research now stand apart from charged public issues. Indeed, while political pressures on science have grown in contem porary America, and especially in th e current m illennium, states and churches have never been indifferent to conceptions o f nature. Still less can social knowledge pre tend to be free of im plications for policy and politics. The claim for its ideological neutrality depends on consigning social science to the realm o f facts ra ther th an values, w hile conceding the legitimacy o f political judgm ent in deciding how to use this inform ation as a basis for action. Not its objects—w hich, being social, political, economic, and historical, are very hum an—b ut its methods, rigorous and im personal, are taken as the ground for social science objectivity. M ethodological rigor, often w ith an em phasis on quantification, has been part o f the drive to m ake a science o f society th a t can hold its hea