The attempt to carry out interdisciplinary research between economics and sociology has been more than problematic in that the assumptions driving the two disciplines, the methods employed and the conclusions attained can be quite different. Vernon Ruttan, in his paper 'The Sociology of Development and Under Development: Are There Lessons for Economics?', attempts to point out the potential contribution of sociologists utilizing modernization theory, dependency theory and world systems theory to economists. The following paper is a response to this endeavor. It examines the article by Ruttan in two ways. It first analyzes the different metatheoreticai assumptions that underlie the two approaches. Secondly, it examines issues raised by Ruttan in an effort to magnify the similarities and differences between the two. It is concluded that what is needed is not a distinction between the social sciences but the generation of a social science which encompasses human societies in all their complexities.