This is a unique study of the theoretical foundations of social science. In particular, it criticizes the practice of applying the methods of the physical sciences to the study of human life. When we use such inappropriate methods, we end in making the human self into a thing, and all the knowledge we gain affords us only more power to dominate and suppress the human. These methods violate human freedom and dignity in any use, let alone in their application in fields like psychology, advertising and politics. This study concludes by developing an alternative approach to explanation.
Modern culture is the source of a crisis in civilization.
This now world-wide culture is generating increasingly intolerable conditions of human life mostly because of the faulty assumptions built into it that concern our powers of knowledge. Because of these assumptions, we fail today to develop and use the whole range of our powers. Consequently, we find ourselves increasingly unable to perceive, let alone understand, the forces flowing into and out of our lives. We can see that things are bad but not why they are so. We do not see this because the very tools of perception we use are the flawed victims of a culture that renders them inadequate.