Abstract
Frank Palmeri sees the conjectural histories of Rousseau, Hume, Herder, and other Enlightenment philosophers as a template for the development of the social sciences in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Without documents or memorials, these thinkers employed conjecture to formulate a naturalistic account of society's commercial and secular progression. This approach informs the work of political economists, anthropologists, sociologists, and sociologists of religion, and its speculative framework creats a surprising ambivalence toward modernity.