The Uncertainties of Knowledge extends Immanuel Wallerstein's decade-long work of elucidating the crisis of knowledge in current intellectual thought. He argues that the disciplinary divisions of academia have trapped us in a paradigm that assumes knowledge is a certainty and that it can help us explain the social world. This is wrong, he suggests. Instead, Wallerstein offers a new conception of the social sciences, one whose methodology allows for uncertainties.

Introduction: The Uncertainties of TimePart I. The Structures of Knowledge1. For Science, Against Scientism: The Dilemmas of Contemporary Knowledge Production2. Social Sciences in the Twenty-first Century3. The End of Certainties in the Social Sciences4. Braudel and Interscience: A Preacher to Empty Pews?5. Time and Duration: The Unexcluded Middle, or Reflections on Braudel and Prigogine6. The Itinerary of World-Systems Analysis, or How to Resist Becoming a TheoryPart II. Dilemmas of the Disciplines7. History in Search of Science8. Writing History9. Global Culture(s): Salvation, Menace, or Myth?10. From Sociology to Historical Social Science: Prospects and Obstacles11. Anthropology, Sociology, and Other Dubious DisciplinesAcknowledgmentsNotesReferencesIndex

Immanuel Wallerstein is Director of the Fernand Braudel Center, Binghamton University, and Senior Research Scholar at Yale University.