Abstract

A welcome reader in recent literature on the methodology and commitments of social science, including 21 sizable essays from the works of Simmel, Winch, Nagel, Hempel, Weber, Ayer, Merleau-Ponty and others. The editor provides an impressive introduction, brief prefaces to the five sections, an index, notes on the contributors, and an extensive bibliography. What makes this volume exciting is its dialectical make-up: it is conceived as an argument, the selections being arranged to form a sustained debate on a number of issues clustered around the idea of a social science. Some of the issues involved: is social science a science?, the nature of theory construction, the merits of Verstehen as method, the place of value theory in social science, and the bearings of theory on practice.--N. S. C.