Hamilton versus Plato
For more than a century there has been a deep divide in the history of Western social science. On one side there has been reasoning from synthetic a prioris. If it is doubtful that all synthetic a prioris can be classified as essences, nevertheless this kind of reasoning can be traced back to classical Greece. Plato's work is the locus classicus. The Greeks believed that one can know the essences of things and systems and know them a priori, by rational thought. On the other side is the belief, or premise, that one can learn or know about anything only on the basis of observation. This rule-that one should reason only from premises that can be supported by observed evidence-is usually associated with the names of C. S. Peirce, John Dewey, and Thorstein Veblen. However, Henry Sumner Maine's Ancient Law (1917, first published 1861) is the earliest effort I have come across to apply the new rules to the social sciences. His basic premise was his insistence that all histories