The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics.
Interpretation
Power is as essential to social science as energy is to physics.
In this quote, Bertrand Russell suggests that understanding power is crucial for analyzing human behavior and social structures, similar to how energy is vital for comprehending the physical world. Just as energy drives the forces in physics, power influences relationships, social dynamics, and governance in society, making it a foundational concept for social sciences.
In practice
In a discussion about political science, one might quote this to highlight the significance of power dynamics.
St. Paul introduced an entirely novel view of marriage, that it existed primarily to prevent the sin of fornication. It is just as if one were to maintain that the sole reason for baking bread is to prevent people from stealing cake.
Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.
Of these austerer virtues the love of truth is the chief, and in mathematics, more than elsewhere, the love of truth may find encouragement for waning faith. Every great study is not only an end in itself, but also a means of creating and sustaining a lofty habit of mind; and this purpose should be kept always in view throughout the teaching and learning of mathematics.
At all times, except when a monarch could enforce his will, war has been facilitated by the fact that vigorous males, confident of victory, enjoyed it, while their females admired them for their prowess.
Moreover, the attitude that one ought to believe such and such a proposition, independently of the question whether there is evidence in its favor, is an attitude which produces hostility to evidence and causes us to close our minds to every fact that does not suit our prejudices.
Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.
Military investigations are designed not to find anyone guilty. And you can't investigate up the chain of command, which is a huge impediment.
Welcome, Anne. I thought you'd come today. You belong to the afternoon so it brought you. Things that belong together are sure to come together. What a lot of trouble that would save some people if they only knew it. But they don't...and so they waste beautiful energy moving heaven and earth to bring things together that don't belong.
What tender and devoted mother wouldn't be dismayed and ill with terror at her son's or daughter's stepping even one hair's breath off the beaten track. No, better let him be happy and live in comfort without originality, is what every mother thinks when she rocks the cradle. The only person among us who can fail to reach the general's rank is the original man - in other words, the man who won't be quiet.
If we divine a discrepancy between a man's words and his character, the whole impression of him becomes broken and painful; he revolts the imagination by his lack of unity, and even the good in him is hardly accepted.
Scientists have power by virtue of the respect commanded by the discipline... We live with poets and politicians, preachers and philosophers. All have their ways of knowing, and all are valid in their proper domain. The world is too complex and interesting for one way to hold all the answers.
The historical mission of our times is to re-invent the humanβat the species level, with critical reflection, within the community of life-systems, in a time-developmental context, by means of story and shared dream experience.
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