The term science sociale was first employed by Mirabeau père in 1767, not Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès in 1789, as historians until now believed. Taking this discovery as its starting point, this article examines the ways in which the idea of a science of society was successively conceptualized in the late eighteenth century by Mirabeau, Sieyès, and Nicolas de Condorcet. Situating their ideas in the context of evolving discussions over the reform of the French state, it argues that they developed three different versions of social science, and that these reflected different attempts to answer the question of how to achieve collective prosperity, justice, and happiness under modern conditions. This article further highlights the changing modes of historical temporality that informed those approaches, which shifted from a focus on the social forms of a mythical past, to a concern with the prevailing norms of the present, to an emphasis, finally, on the likely developments of an ever-perfecting future. In doing so, it shows that the history of early French social science is best understood not as a process of gradual advancement, but rather as one of serial reinvention.

“社会科学”一词最早由米拉波·佩尔 (Mirabeau père)于 1767 年使用，而不是历史学家至今认为的那样，由伊曼纽尔·约瑟夫·西耶斯 (Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès) 于 1789 年使用。本文以这一发现为出发点，探讨了 18 世纪末米拉波、西耶斯和尼古拉斯·德·孔多塞相继概念化社会科学思想的方式。将他们的想法置于有关法国国家改革不断发展的讨论的背景下，它认为他们发展了三种不同版本的社会科学，并且这些版本反映了回答如何实现集体繁荣、正义和幸福问题的不同尝试在现代条件下。本文进一步强调了影响这些方法的历史时间性模式的变化，这些方法从关注神话般的过去的社会形式，转向关注当前的普遍规范，最后强调可能的发展一个永远完美的未来。这样做表明，法国早期社会科学的历史最好不要被理解为一个逐渐进步的过程，而是一个连续的重塑过程。