This volume offers one of the first systematic analyses of the rise of modern social science. Contrary to the standard accounts of various social science disciplines, the essays in this volume demonstrate that modern social science actually emerged during the critical period between 1750 and 1850. It is shown that the social sciences were a crucial element in the conceptual and epistemic revolution, which parallelled and partly underpinned the political and economic transformations of the modern world. From a consistently comparative perspective, a group of internationally leading scholars takes up fundamental issues such as the role of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution in the shaping of the social sciences, the changing relationships between political theory and moral discourse, the profound transformation of philosophy, and the constitution of political economy and statistics.

Universities are said to be the "powerhouses" of modern society. They educate our leaders and advance our basic knowledge of nature and society. The essays in this book discuss how universities work, and have worked, in relation to other parts of the higher education "system" and in the context of their historical development. The authors are particularly interested in "complexity" as it affects universities, the professions and government, and exercise comparative analysis in assessing the functioning, the success and the significance of universities.

Universities are said to be the 'powerhouses' of modern society. They educate leaders and advance our basic knowledge of nature and society. Yet historically they have been vulnerable when meeting the challenges of dynamic industrial democracies or indeed of modern totalitarian states. Today universities are at the centre of society's attention and must therefore balance a great number of contradictory demands and pressures. Can this be done within the structure and ethos of an historic institution called a 'university', or are such institutions now passe and merely part of a bureaucratically managed higher education 'system'? These essays discuss the ways in which universities have coped with complexity since 1800, while retaining their basic 'idea'. Special attention is accorded to the role of the State and the autonomous professions in defining the mission of universities and in their struggle for individuality in the face of mounting pluralistic and bureaucratic pressures.