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, social, science and/or theory:

    “The new supplants the old. Yet men’s minds are stuffed with outworn bunk. Educating the young in the latest findings of authorities and scholars in the social sciences is important. It is equally important to devise ways and means for aiding the middle-aged and old to reexamine hang-over unscientific doctrines and ideas in the light of recent discovery and research.”
    —Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)

    “The higher the state of civilization, the more completely do the actions of one member of the social body influence all the rest, and the less possible is it for any one man to do a wrong thing without interfering, more or less, with the freedom of all his fellow-citizens.”
    —Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)

    “For twenty-five centuries, Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that the world is not for the beholding. It is for hearing. It is not legible, but audible. Our science has always desired to monitor, measure, abstract, and castrate meaning, forgetting that life is full of noise and that death alone is silent: work noise, noise of man, and noise of beast. Noise bought, sold, or prohibited. Nothing essential happens in the absence of noise.”
    —Jacques Attali (b. 1943)

    “There is in him, hidden deep-down, a great instinctive artist, and hence the makings of an aristocrat. In his muddled way, held back by the manacles of his race and time, and his steps made uncertain by a guiding theory which too often eludes his own comprehension, he yet manages to produce works of unquestionable beauty and authority, and to interpret life in a manner that is poignant and illuminating.”
    —H.L. (Henry Lewis)