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:

    Can you conceive what it is to native-born American women citizens, accustomed to the advantages of our schools, our churches and the mingling of our social life, to ask over and over again for so simple a thing as that “we, the people,” should mean women as well as men; that our Constitution should mean exactly what it says?
    Mary F. Eastman, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4 ch. 5, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)

    I exulted like “a pagan suckled in a creed” that had never been worn at all, but was brand-new, and adequate to the occasion. I let science slide, and rejoiced in that light as if it had been a fellow creature. I saw that it was excellent, and was very glad to know that it was so cheap. A scientific explanation, as it is called, would have been altogether out of place there. That is for pale daylight.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    The great tragedy of science—the slaying of a beautiful theory by an ugly fact.
    Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895)