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"Won't waste your time," she【69】. "If the details on your【70】are accurate and the articles Laura【71】me have correct background, we won't have to【72】that." I【73】in approval. She was obviously a【74】, and an intelligent one【75】. It was always【76】to sit for a【77】when the questioner spent the first hour asking what schools I had【78】, how long【79】, and whether I liked my job.
"Is it all right【80】you if we start with some information about the Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit？"
"I'd like that," I replied.
(61)
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Even the first century of the industrial revolution produced more "improvements" than "revolutions" in standards of living. With the railroad and the spinning and weaving of textiles as important exceptions, most innovations of that period were innovations in how goods were produced and transported, and in new kinds of capital, but not in consumer goods. Standards of living improved but styles of life remained much the same.
The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw a faster and different kind of change. For the first time, technological capability outran population growth and natural resource scarcity. By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the typical inhabitant of the leading economies—a British, a Belgian, an American, or an Australian had perhaps three times the standard of living of someone in a pre-industrial economy.
Still, so slow was the pace of change that people, or at least aristocratic intellectuals, could think of their predecessors of some two thousand years before as effectively their contemporaries. Marcus Tullius Cicero, a Roman aristocrat and politician, might have felt more or less at home in the company of Thomas Jefferson. The plows were better in Jefferson's time. Sailing ships were much improved. However, these might have been insufficient to create a sense of a qualitative change in the order of life for the elite. Moreover, being a slave of Jefferson was probably a lot like being a slave of Cicero.
So slow was the pace of change that intellectuals in the early nineteenth century debated whether the industrial revolution was worthwhile, whether it was an improvement or a degeneration in the standard of living. Opinions were genuinely divided, with as optimistic a liberal as John Stuart Mill coming down on the "pessimist" side as late as the end of the 1840s.
In the twentieth century, however, standards of living exploded. In the twentieth century, the magnitude of the growth in material wealth has been so great as to make it nearly impossible to measure. Consider a sample of consumer goods available through Montgomery Ward in 1895 when a one-speed bicycle cost $65. Since then, the price of a bicycle measured in "nominal" dollars has more than doubled (as a result of inflation). Today, the bicycle is much less expensive in terms of the measure that truly counts, its "real" price: the work and sweat needed to earn its east. In 1895, it took perhaps 260 hours' worth of the average American worker's production to amass enough money to buy a one-speed bicycle. Today an average American worker can buy one—and of higher quality—for less than 8 hours worth of production.
On the bicycle standard (measuring wealth by counting up how many bicycles the labor can buy) the average American worker today is 36 times richer than his or her counterpart was in 1895. Other commodities would tell a different story. An office chair has become 12.5 times cheaper in terms of the time it takes the average worker to produce enough to pay for it. A Steinway piano or an accordion is only twice as cheap. A silver teaspoon is 25 percent more expensive.
Thus the answer to the question "How much wealthier are we today than our counterparts of a century ago？" depends on which commodities you view as important. For many personal services—having a butler to answer the door and polish your silver spoons—you would find little difference in average wealth between 1895 and 1990: an
The expression "explore the natural wonders of the world" is in quotation marks because
The main contradiction raised in this text is that
It is not forbidden to dream of building a better world, which is by and large what the social sciences try to help us to do. How to make cities more harmonious, reduce crime rates, improve welfare, overcome racism, increase our wealth—this is the stuff of social sciences. The trouble is that the findings of social sciences are often dismissed as being too theoretical, too ambitious or too unpalatable. The methods of research are also often attacked for their lack of rigor, and critics are quick to point out that the people who make the important decisions pay little attention to what social scientists have to say anyway. This would change if the social sciences made themselves more relevant and ready for the society of the 21st century.
Social sciences began to take shape in the 19th century, but came into their own at the beginning of the 20th century, when a number of well-established disciplines, including economics, sociology, political science, history and anthropology really made their mark. Geography and psychology could be added to that list. However, only sociology, political science and economics have succeeded in consolidating their position in the social sciences mainstream. The others were virtually all marginalised. Moreover, powerful institutional barriers now separate the various disciplines.
Hardly the right atmosphere in which to grow and deal with the harsh criticism which the social sciences have come in for from many quarters, including governments and international commissions. Radical measures are now being suggested to turn things round, from how to award university chairs, to setting syllabi and raising funds.
The need for decompartmentalising and striking a new order in the relationship between the disciplines concerns all of the social sciences, though perhaps economics most of all, Only it has acquired a dominant position in management and public affairs. Some would My it has fallen under the sway of "unitary thinking", with little room for debate, for example, on the question of debt reduction or monetary tightness. Moreover, many people do not believe that economic science forms part of social sciences at all. This is a somewhat problematic position to uphold, particularly as economic developments are largely determined by political, social and cultural factors. Yet, economists often have difficulty understanding or taking such factors into account. This has left economics exposed to attack, for example, over its prescriptions for development and its analysis of events, such as the causes of the Asian crisis. To many, economics relies too heavily on hypothetical and sometimes unrealistic assumptions.
Can social sciences bounce back and assert themselves in the 21st century？ We will probably not be able to tell for a few decades, since the ways in which societies analyse themselves develop very slowly. After all, the social sciences are rarely given to sudden discoveries and headline breakthroughs like some other sciences. What is more, social sciences may continue to face the stout resistance of established institutions defending their own territory and opposing innovation and change. Could it be that society, which by definition seeks stability, has an in- built resistance towards indulging in any form. of self-analysis？ Few people have an appetite for hard truth. But perhaps in the information age and in the dematerialised economy of the knowledge world, all that could change. Perhaps society will discover a pressing need to know itself much better, if only to survive. Social sciences will then have a different status.
The social sciences are criticised for
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