Counter-Enlightenment social science weaponizes specialized research to restore unthinking tradition.

Evidence

In the first place, the whole book consisted of an attack on educators and intellectuals, who had plunged people into unrest by disturbing the apparent naturalness of traditional patterns of behaviour, and had thus caused trouble for the scientists who were required to smooth over the effects of the popularization of scientific discoveries. Paradoxically, this counter-Enlightenment enemy of the popularization of what are actually highly scientifically specialized discoveries' was making an appeal to a wide public with a paperback that, again paradoxically, was supposed to serve as evidence for the fact that In many areas of science, we are in the process of rediscovering the functional significance of tradition.’ Thus readers, who were not really supposed to find out anything about the subject of Schelsky’s book, were supposed to be inspired to return to an unthinking recognition of tradition by conscious and artificial scientific attempts to restore traditions that had natural validity. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 613

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes Critical Theory’s critique of mass-popularized social science as a tool of domination rather than of enlightenment. — connects to: Fields of knowledge are constrained by society, culture, and institutional power — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 505; Enlightenment thought frames tradition and modernity as opposing binary cultures.; Social sciences may themselves be complicit in datafied hollowing out of the social — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 431 (+6 more)
• SEED: An essay on the paradox of anti-popular-science books that themselves become mass-market bestsellers to restore ‘natural’ tradition.
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Fields of knowledge are constrained by society, culture, and institutional power — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 505; Enlightenment thought frames tradition and modernity as opposing binary cultures.; Social sciences may themselves be complicit in datafied hollowing out of the social — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 431 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Social sciences may themselves be complicit in datafied hollowing out of the social #complicates (0.78) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 431
• Social theory depends on insight into society’s nature more than on specialized knowledge. #complicates (0.74) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 730