Time and space are irremediably locked together and constitute a single dimension, TimeSpace. Social science, as invented between 1850 and 1914, has involved limited interpretations of TimeSpace emphasizing either eternal TimeSpaces (economics, sociology, political science) or episodic geopolitical TimeSpaces (history, anthropology, Oriental studies). The difficulty for establishing a successful discipline of geography was that it straddled these two kinds of TimeSpace. Social science neglected three other types of TimeSpace that were potentially subversive. The Annales school of history emphasized cyclic-ideological TimeSpace and structural TimeSpace which transcend the old choice between the idiographic and nomothetic through the study of historical systems. Historical systems are defined by structural TimeSpace and function through cyclico-ideological TimeSpace. Between structural TimeSpaces there is transformational TimeSpace and our historical social system is reaching such a moment of bifurcation. Intellectually, social science needs refashioning into a tool of this transformation and, politically, we have to dare to develop a sober utopia and to seek to construct it. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
