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Even after the foundations of disciplinary-based associations had been laid and legitimated and the universities had begun to open up toward the sciences (but not to chemistry, women, or English), it was still possible for an unofficial group like the élite “X-club”—which included Sir John Hooker, Thomas Huxley, and Herbert Spencer—to delimit and dominate scientific policy, education, and activity across an extremely wide disciplinary spectrum. They founded the journal Nature in 1869, which is still one of the most prestigious scientific publications in the world.
Within its own terms and aims, the Enlightenment programme, as applied in and through the physical sciences, was outstandingly successful, carrying all before it as Nature was controlled through engines, canals and railways, disinfectants, dies, and dynamos. Nonetheless, from its very inception, voices were raised to caution or protest against what were perceived as the arrogant and triumphalist claims of scientists to have privileged access to, or even a monopoly on, the truth. Some called on forms of philosophical scepticism; others defended scriptural revelation or Romantic spiritual values. Still others, though, called for a universalising science of mankind, a line of thought that would give rise to new disciplines, such as anthropology and sociology, and new approaches to history, psychology and politics, in brief, to what are now generally known as the “social sciences”. Inevitably, because of its far-reaching philosophical implications, this development itself became the subject of intense and often heated discussion: What was the nature of “social facts”, and what was the status of these new disciplines? Since, by definition, social facts or representations are not amenable to physical manipulation such as heating or weighing, the investigation of beliefs, values, representations, and thoughts necessitates an alternative epistemological and methodological paradigm. A physical substance being studied in a laboratory is not aware that that is the case nor of any other external factors which impinge on it. It exists in the world, but no world exists in it. Human beings “have” social worlds and base their behaviour and thought upon them, whether humans are the observers or the observed.