Robert Brown’s interesting book makes it clear that the history of ideas is a more complex and tough-minded enterprise than popular sloganising in this area would suggest. Brown, who is Professorial Fellow in the History of Ideas unit at the Australian National University, concerned with two different concep­tions of the operation of the humane ‘sciences’. On the one side is the scientistic approach espoused by those inheritors of the Enlightenment who believe that there are laws of society just as there are laws of nature, and that the aims and methods of the social scientist should be similar to those of the natural scientist.