Exploring History
October 2018
https://exploringrealhistory.blogspot.com/2018/10/part-3-great-deceitsocialism-begins-as.html
In considering the term "social science" the question arises as to what is the true meaning of the term? A true and definitive answer to that question has never been properly given because "social science" is a term that has meant different things to different people and movements at different times. Although the term has been used on occasion by non-socialists its most consistent application has been by the left-wing.
Before 1825, in France, Claude Henri de Rouvroy' Comte de Saint-Simon (1760-1825) a French aristocrat and speculator, had developed a socialistic concept upon which to organize all of society on the basis of what then was known as "science". When he was a youth, Saint-Simon felt that he was destined to great things and had his valet "awaken him every morning with the words, 'Remember, monsieur Le Comte, that you 'have great things to do.' It was during the revolution, and while suffering a temporary imprisonment in the Luxembourg, that visions of a new social system, based on scientific principles, and not on political conventionality, first unfolded themselves to his ardent imagination. His ancestor Charlemagne appeared to him one night in a vision and said:
"Since the world existed, only one family enjoys the honor of producing a hero and a philosopher of the first rank. This honor is reserved for my family. My son, your success as philosopher will equal that which I reached as soldier and politician."
Throughout his life Saint-Simon was afflicted with recurrent mental disorders.
The concept of "social science" was thus apparently conceived in the disturbed brain of an aristocrat who was motivated by ghostly hallucinations. After his "vision", Saint-Simon, "though now 38 years of age, commenced to study 'science', of which he was as yet quite ignorant. It is an irony of history that "social science" was born in a mind completely lacking in scientific training.