SOCIAL SCIENTIST I have engaged with some aspects of these questions in my 'Pathways through Method: An Essay in Review', Social Scientist, Vol22 (7-8) 1994, pp.83-100. Methodological issues, I realize, often turn readers off, but there is no avoiding the space of method for coming to a principled verdict about India's modernity. I believe this gesture approximates to the spirit of Marx. While his many theses are surely contestable, what cannot - and demands emulation - is the body of work in which these theses are contained. Marxist historians (if there are any left?) could do well to listen. What follows is a somewhat free elaboration of an idea taken from Umberto Eco, Kant and the Platypus: Essays on Language and Cognition (Trtfns. A. McEwen) London: Seeker and Warburg, 1999, Ch.l passim.