The Uncertainties of Knowledge (Politics, History, and Social Change)

"The Uncertainties of Knowledge" extends Immanuel Wallerstein's decade-long work of elucidating the crisis of knowledge in current intellectual thought. He argues that the disciplinary divisions of academia have trapped us in a paradigm that assumes knowledge is a certainty and that it can help us explain the social world. This is wrong, he suggests. Instead, Wallerstein offers a new conception of the social sciences, one whose methodology allows for uncertainties. Author note: Immanuel Wallerstein is Director of the Fernand Braudel Center, Binghamton University, and Senior Research Scholar at Yale University.