The transition to capitalism remains a problem of continuing scholarly fascination. Debates as to the nature of capitalism and the reasons for its historical emergence endure precisely because they address the concern of so many sociologists, historians and others to find an order in the "past", so as to give meaning for the "present" and hope for the "future". However this may be, the terms in which such ventures as the transition debate are currently being conducted reflect a profound crisis with the evolutionary paradigm inherited from the nineteenth century. In the language of Thomas Kuhn (1962), social change theory has now moved beyond the phase of "normal science" in which there exists basic agreement as to the utility of the evolutionary paradigm. At the same time, no "new" paradigm has emerged. While "crisis' is a much abused term, it is no exaggeration to say that the proliferation of "conjunctural", "multilinear", "neo-evolutionist", "contingentist", "diffusionist" and "narrative" approaches to the study of social change currently available reflects a crisis of uncertainty as to the possibility of reconstructing the study of social change around some new general idiom.