Abstract
The article underlines the strong contrast between the recognition of social sciences in the academic arena and the numerous epistemological and methodological difficulties that derive from a too highly specialized division into subdisciplines, inherited from a configuration now obsolete. It takes for its starting-point a critical appraisal of contemporary economic research and its desire to found a pure economic theory, totally apart from other social sciences, without the reference to methodological individualism and the intensive use of the assumptions of rationality and equilibrium. Given the current quite unsatisfactory state of the social sciences, there is an alternative research strategy built upon the interaction of various neighbour disciplines addressing the same issue, fully taking into account historical time and the related irreversibility, a new and imaginative use of system theory. Last but not least, a larger diversity of social groups making demands on social scientists would make for the recognition of the neglected variety of social links between countries and regions. This may open a new path for really universal and more relevant social sciences in the 21st century.
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