Abstract

Some outstanding theories of social and historical process are now discussed with the help of our methodological construction, commencing with a criticism of the Marxian distinction between structure and superstructure and various notions of historical ages. Furthermore, the central role that some social theories attribute to civilization forms and irrational human behaviors is acknowledged, and care is taken to show that the merely observational treatment of those phenomena in the past has yielded misleading forecasts as to the likely trajectories and fate of Western societies and, at present, distorts interpretations of globalization process. We also criticize the leading role that important theorists attribute to stationary motion or, vice-versa, creative processes, to institutional or religious and political factors, showing the marked one-sidedness of the interpretation of social and historical processes centered on each one of those factors. We reject the implications of the merely observational attitude, which generates an exaggerated attention to the spontaneity of events, and which is sometimes accompanied by either an ingenuous optimism or dark pessimism. We conclude by opposing, to the present dominant pessimism, the wide ranging instrumentation that our methodology and interpretation of society implies.