When I was a graduate sociology student many years ago, I visualized "the literature" as an ever-growing mountain of sociological findings that would continue to grow until, someday, the discipline had obtained reasonably complete and perfect knowledge about the workings of society. Others held more sensible versions of this image, but the hope that scientific research could be cumulative -or mountain-building -was forever destroyed by Thomas Kuhn's finding (1962) that the paradigmatic axioms that underlie everyday "normal science" are overthrown and replaced periodically. However, Kuhn did not go far enough. Even the normal science that is conducted while paradigms remain dominant is not cumulative, at least in sociology, for empirical researchers regularly carry out research that repeats findings already reported by earlier sociologists. Moreover, they do so not to replicate previous findings. Indeed, they often do not know the earlier work, thus redoing what does not need redoing instead of moving ahead to new knowledge. No wonder the discipline is often accused of reporting common sense, i.e., the already known, or not contributing enough to the stock of social knowledge. Only social theory seems to be exempt from this rule, for theoretical writings often build on the ideas of past major theorists. The hypothesis that normal sociological science is not cumulative is hardly new. Pitirim Sorokin made it the lead theme of his 1956 book Fads and Foibles in Modem Sociology and Related Sciences, and I would imagine