statistical studies of our own century show clearly enough is that, grim as factory conditions were in the newborn industrial age, they enabled most people to achieve a far higher standard of living than ever they could have hoped for in rural circumstances.
Nisbet reports all this fairly enough and assents to the present-day view of the case, but he declines to consider its epistemological implications. It is all well and good to show that the greatest sociologists of the last century proceeded by the intuitive leaps and bounds of the artist. It is quite another matter to show that their intuitions brought them (and us) reliable knowledge about what was going on in their realm of inquiry.
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