Abstract

There are two parts to the paper. The first is concerned with the question: “are there law statements in any of the social sciences?” In order to answer this question two explanations drawn from the literature of anthropology and sociology are considered in detail. It is shown that these are “explanation sketches” rather than logically complete explanations. Both of these “sketches” presuppose but do not state tendency laws. These law statements are then made explicit by the writer, and thus it is shown that the use of law statements is assumed in at least some of the social sciences.