Space and Order Looked at Critically. Non-Comparability and Procedural Substantivism in History and the Social Sciences

Abstract

It is a matter of curiosity and of considerable significance that two or more centuries after the beginnings of a powerful movement to introduce irreversibility into European thought, new attempts should continue to be made to institute that same epistemological revolution — attempts which are highly controversial and attended with frequent failures and reversals.1) Nor is the introduction of irreversibility simply confined to the specific difficulties of the natural sciences; every branch of systematic thought is affected by the same fundamental problem, with the exception of one or two most surprising, but significant cases, to be dealt with in detail in this essay.