The present text primarily seeks to popularize complex methodological problems of the social sciences. It is addressed to both specialists and non-specialists - but generally to those who are aware, with a high level of formal education. The text provides one of the possible answers to the question of how the "vast and contradictory" (Paul Feyerabend) scientific thought can be understood. It introduces, therefore, without dogmas and evasions, what characterizes scientific thought and distinguishes it, for example, from theology, poetry, pseudoscience, fortune-telling, and demagoguery. [...] Essentially, this text is also a manual against bad encyclopedism, that is, against the anarchic and methodologically unsuspecting accumulation of knowledge that characterizes many study programs. For the purpose of popularization, it resorts to examples from a wide range of research in the social sciences - European studies, political science, sociology, economics, etc. Consequently, it restores the connection with the philosophical tradition of ancient Greece.