Prime Mover - Social Science Theory

Social Science Theory

  • A hypothetical person that has a significant impact on society and history due to the exercise of their free will, unfettered by external psychological influences or social forces; also the name of the theory that affirms the existence and possibility of such people.
  • Regarding socio-political complexity, the term Prime Mover describes any influence upon a social group that leads to a higher degree of societal complexity.

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Famous quotes containing the words social, science and/or theory:

    ...I remembered the rose bush that had reached a thorny branch out through the ragged fence, and caught my dress, detaining me when I would have passed on. And again the symbolism of it all came over me. These memories and visions of the poor—they were the clutch of the thorns. Social workers have all felt it. It holds them to their work, because the thorns curve backward, and one cannot pull away.
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    Everything to which we concede existence is a posit from the standpoint of a description of the theory-building process, and simultaneously real from the standpoint of the theory that is being built. Nor let us look down on the standpoint of the theory as make-believe; for we can never do better than occupy the standpoint of some theory or other, the best we can muster at the time.
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