At last week’s FSSO conference, Peter Berger brought up what he thought the four big events of recent history which social scientists failed to predict and for which there is still no great explanation. They are:
1.) The collapse of communism.
2.) The rise of East Asia as an economic powerhouse.
3.) The rise of the 1960′s counter-culture.
4.) The revival of religiosity across the globe.
The last question is especially important to Berger as he had predicted the inevitable rise of secularism decades ago. I can’t think of any sociologists that predicted any of these events off the top of my head either.
Can someone point to sociologists who either predicted or adequately explained any of these events?
- Josh McCabe
I thought Hayek had predicted the collapse of communism.
Well I think he said it would happen eventually (sorta like Austrian macroeconomists “predict” every recession), but I think Berger meant who predicted that the collapse would take place when it did.