Social science used to restore tradition remains a self-undermining, merely popularized appeal.

Evidence

This penetrating critique was ambivalent. 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, 2468

Categorization

• DEFINE: A compact example of Frankfurt-School ideological critique: exposing the internal contradiction of a conservative thinker using scientific popularization to restore ‘natural’ tradition.
• XREF: connects to: Criticizing tradition does not amount to abandoning it. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 950

Broader Connections

• Criticizing tradition does not amount to abandoning it. #complicates (0.72) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 950