Dreams that Men Dare to Dream: The Role of Ideas in Western Modernization

Abstract

For the better part of the past generation, social scientists have devoted much of their best effort to the study of modernization. Economists have examined growth and development. Demographers have detailed the demographic transition. Anthropoligists have observed the dissolution of traditional societies. Social psychologists have measured the emergence of achievement motivation. Sociologists have traced the myriad patterns of secularization, professionalization, bureaucratization, and rationalization. Yet for all their effort it seems scarcely an exaggeration to call modernization still the critical enigma of contemporary social science. Its meaning appears to recede ever further from us. Its substance grows more mysterious the more that it is studied, and its origin and evolution become more inexplicable.