Antedating of "Social Science"

[Fred Shapiro]

social science (OED 1811)

1796 Thelwall, John. Rights of nature, against the usurpations of
establishments. A series of letters to the people, in reply to the false
principles of Burke. 22 (Eighteenth Century Collections Online)  This
faint copyist, like his eccentric master, is an advocate for the
perpetuity of the old Gothic Customary; and, with all the admitted
improvements of social science, would fatter us to the institutions which,
twelve or fifteen hundred years ago, were fabricated, by ignorant savages,
in "the woods of Germany."

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
  Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press,
Yale Law School                             forthcoming
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