Books, Arts & Manners: Meat Axe as Criticism

Social Sciences as Sorcery By Stanislav Andreski

St. Martin’s, 238 pp., $7.95 Not taking part as yet in the net of social conventions which controls and protects adults, spirited little boys occasionally become enfants terribles: they say things that, although true, are customarily left unsaid by adults for the sake of politeness or prudence. By embarrassing some adults, the enfant terrible provides malicious amusement for others, and attention for himself. Sometimes he becomes so inured to attention that to get it as he grows older he says things to epater les bourgeois. When they become adults, such enfants terribles may disguise themselves as social scientists.

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Ernest van den Haag

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Social Sciences as Sorcery By Stanislav Andreski

St. Martin’s, 238 pp., $7.95 Not taking part as yet in the net of social conventions which controls and protects adults, spirited little boys occasionally become enfants terribles: they say things that, although true, are customarily left unsaid by adults for the sake of politeness or prudence. By embarrassing some adults, the enfant terrible provides malicious amusement for others, and attention for himself. Sometimes he becomes so inured to attention that to get it as he grows older he says things to epater les bourgeois. When they become adults, such enfants terribles may disguise themselves as social scientists.