Are the social sciences combat sports? Reflections on the obstacles to the scientific study of the social, between Markovian temptation, scalar indifference, and the historian’s obsession with the past

Abstract This paper does not intend to present results of an empirical study but rather those of theoretical, epistemological, and historiographical reflections about the heterogeneity of the field of social sciences, a field fragmented into objects, methods, and concepts that are mutually ignorant across disciplines and languages. From the author’s historical perspective, the roots of the blockages lie in the historical conditions surrounding the formation of the social sciences, particularly their initial disciplinary configurations aimed at population control (social engineering). Subsequently, once these initial conditions were overcome (thanks to the scientistic moment), the disciplinary structure — enabled by decomposing the object of social science into various dimensions (time, space, language, culture, kinship, etc.) assigned to distinct disciplines — helped mitigate the critical risk that they embodied. The author maintains that the object of social science cannot be anything other than the explanation of the dynamics of human societies, as expressed in social change. However, this object is largely neglected in favor of empirical work on specific aspects of social functioning, to the detriment of studying transformation. Concepts and models for understanding transformation remain inadequate, even among historians. Although historians are theoretically the only ones who fully incorporate the dimension of time (hence the reference to Markov and the question of scales), they do so in a strictly backward-looking manner. After having presented the methodological frame of this analysis (2.), the paper will address the historical genesis of the cacophony within the social sciences (3.1.); the dynamics of social change as a desirable yet underexplored theoretical horizon (3.2.); and propose concrete steps to advance toward this objective (3.3.).