This is an original contribution to political theory and readers of Lindblom's other books will find themselves in familiar territory. The main argument is that our understanding of society is limited whether we are social scientists, policy makers or ordinary citizens. The author uses the general term "probing" for all social inquiries and discusses how different forms of probing are impaired, especially by elite interests. He also discusses the role of social science and its relation to lay probing. Finally he presents the idea of a "self-guiding society" where decision making would to some extent be decentralized.

In my opinion Lindblom's ideas are among most interesting ones in contemporary social theory due to their originality. As he states in this book, most social scientists subscribe blindly to the ideal of centralized, supposedly scientific decision making. This book is an important step in the opposite direction. It's certainly not perfect, especially the chapter on social science wasn't quite as informative as it could have been, but on the whole I strongly recommend this book for all critically inclined thinkers.