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This article presents the author's reply to the comments of John Law and Barry Barnes on the article "Three Models of Scientific Development." The model of branching, for instance, deals with more than the consequences of innovation. One of its central assumptions is that the evolution of any one network depends considerably on developments in neighboring fields. In other words, the model of branching is an attempt to describe some of the processes by which established cultural resources in science are extended into new areas of investigation and some of the ways in which areas of investigation are defined as new in relation to an established corpus of knowledge. The model of branching is as much concerned, therefore, with the sources of innovation as with its consequences. It is an attempt to treat scientific development as a continuous process of discovering. There is the claim that the model of branching is a curious reflection of actors' own processes of labeling, and results from an attempt to use these as they stand in an analysis of cultural innovation. It is implied that the model of branching would have to take these ridiculous research areas seriously and that there must be, therefore, some basic fault in the perspective underlying the model.

This article presents the author's comments on the article "Three Models of Scientific Development," by M.J. Mulkay. Mulkay suggests that such development is better understood in terms of a `model of branching' rather than in terms of a `model of closure' such as that to be found in the work of T.S. Kuhn. Kuhn's interest in cognitive and cultural change as such is manifest in his concentration on the process of innovation. Mulkay has used his notion of branching into new areas of ignorance, produced as the consequences of innovation, to account for social change within science. If these interests are confused, it becomes dangerously easy to fall victim to misleading inferences and groundless expectations. Some of the most interesting issues in the study of science and scientists surround the problem of understanding why some areas or activities are thought to be more promising than others, why some doing normal science find their field `played out' whilst others find more problems being generated, hydra-like, than are being solved.

Debate with Marxism has given sociology much and not the least valuable outcome has been the critical scrutiny of basic pre-suppositions which might otherwise have gone unquestioned. A dialectical approach in sociology is not often enough seen for what it is: an alternative to the dominant orthodoxy in sociological method. Indeed the very use of the term "dialectic" tends to invite the side-tracking of the main issues by arousing premature demands for precise definition or philological projects. The dialectical paradigm has as its central concern just that new conception of history which brought it into being. It is focused on the generation of new phenomena, on all that is associated with emergence, creation and novelty. In a sociology which is conceived of as revealing the essential basis of any society whatsoever, there is an intrinsic interest in Order. In a society in a rapid period of social change, sociology acts as a defence mechanism, telling the reality, behind all the changes, there lies an abiding set of elements and principles.

Over the last few years, a charge has come that sociology is a form of bourgeois ideology, its function defined as the legitimation of the status quo, in so far as it ignores or minimises the role of class conflict in society and fails to grasp the dialectical character of social change. Most sociologists emphatically reject the view that their science is ideological and criticise Marxism as outdated, dogmatic and wholly ideological. In the book "German Ideology," authors remark that morals, religion and metaphysics have no history or development independent of society and its system of production. Historians of sociological thought frequently minimise this fairly obvious point which, as the sociology of knowledge has emphasised, points to the social determination of ideas; that the views expressed by a social theorist will ultimately depend on the way in which be structures the social world, on his world vision and on his relationship with the ideas and values of determinate social strata. It will be claimed that sociology through philosopher Auguste Comte, and Marxism through sociologist Karl Marx were originally in opposition as social theory through their contrasting treatment of political economy.

The article focuses on the relationship between tradition and development in the societies that are extremely backward technologically and highly traditional. Particular societies are studied which may exemplify some of the facets of the relationship between development and tradition as they affect the planner. The problem of the relationship between tradition and development is one of compatibility. A tradition acquires its sanction from precedent rather than from efficiency. The first of the societies is that of the Chakmas. They are Buddhists, speak a Tibeto-burmese language, and are the largest of the dozen tribes living in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. They are most peaceful and charming people, deeply devoted to their way of life and wanting, as they themselves say, nothing but freedom, peace and food. Till a few years ago, it was the policy of the Government to keep the Hill Tracts as free as possible from outside influence, and entry was rigidly restricted. But the world does not stand still. The danger of a policy of isolation is that it cannot be maintained, implacable circumstances will break into the most idyllic conditions of material and social self-sufficiency.

The article presents two types of approach in assessing the results of social work. In the first of these a direct attempt is made to create a formula which can be applied to measure change. This was done in a series of American studies in which the chief workers were J. Hunt and L. S. Kogan. These studies are an attempt to produce something very similar to an attitude "test" in the form of a "movement scale." Thirty-eight cases were selected and analysed in consultation with caseworkers, and a number of major areas of change were abstracted. The Hunt and Kogan studies were designed to produce a reliable measuring rod. They demonstrate conclusively that it is possible to obtain a considerable degree of agreement between social workers in judging the changes taking place in the case. Another approach is the follow-up and prediction studies of offenders where the technique is to start with a criterion of success relating to a point in time some five years after a discharge or after the end of the parole period.

The article focuses on the pressure of events that is pushing strongly in the direction of the increased involvement of social scientists in the tackling of practical administrative problems. The accelerating tempo of social change, the dislocations and emergencies of total war and its aftermath, the increasing scale of political and economic organization, create problems which go beyond the experience and improvising powers of the available administrators. These problems demand a more comprehensive and studied approach, a scientific approach. As a result the influence of social and economic research on practical administration, always important in a long range and indirect kind of way, is steadily becoming also direct and immediate. There is an obvious and close connection between the rise of sociology and the increasing scale of political and economic organization. Sociologist G.L. Arnold states that it is difficult to escape the impression that sociology and collectivism are inherently related to each other. The tendencies making for a collectivist order also make for an attempt to elucidate the functioning of such an order, that is, they encourage the growth of sociology.

This article is concerned with the role of personality in producing social change and with the effects upon the individual of changes in the groups and communities of which one is a part. According to the author, the social changes to which his article refers include such practical matters as the decrease in the output of research and in the quality of teaching, such formal organizational matters as changes in routes of communication and in the occupancy of such roles as committee chairmanships, such impersonal social matters as the splitting of the community first into two groups, then into several groups and finally into numerous splinter groups. Social and political forces present in the society influence individual and social change in a community with references to history and existing conditions and events. Each individual and each personality are major factors in stimulating social change in the groups and communities of which each is part. Social changes include such practical matters as the decrease in the output of research and in the quality of teaching, organizational matters such as changes in the routes of communication and in the occupancy of roles as committee chairmanships and leadership positions indicating the practice of social science principles.