Agent-based modeling has become a common and well-established tool in the social sciences and certain of the humanities. Here, we aim to provide an overview of the different modeling approaches in current use. Our discussion unfolds in two parts: we first classify different aspects of the model-building process and identify a number of characteristics shared by most agent-based models in the humanities and social sciences; then we map relevant differences between the various modeling approaches. We classify (...) these into different dimensions including the type of target systems addressed, the intended modeling goals, and the models’ degree of abstraction. Along the way, we provide reference to related debates in contemporary philosophy of science. (shrink)

Politics and Modernity provides a critical review of the key interface of contemporary political theory and social theory about the questions of modernity and postmodernity. Review essays offer a broad-ranging assessment of the issues at stake in current debates. Among the works reviewed are those of William Connolly, Anthony Giddens, J[um]urgen Habermas, Alasdair MacIntyre, Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor and Roy Bhaskar. As well as reviewing the contemporary literature, the contributors assess the historical roots of current problems in the works (...) of Nietzsche and Max Weber. (shrink)

Illustrating the knowledge and ideas of thinkers such as Mandeville, Hume, Montesquieu and Smith, this book fully investigates the entire panorama of social sciences as well as providing a clear and concise analysis of the history of the social sciences from the point at which evolutionary theory entered the field. Examining the history of culture and humanity, Lorenzo Infantino discusses the 'discovery of society, ' when people stopped seeing behind every social phenomenon the (...) direct action of human and/or divine will, and how the subsequent void was filled by the unintended creation of language, habits, customs, laws and public power. Focussing on the idea that the object of social sciences should be the study of unintended consequences, Infantino also expertly reviews the approach of 'methodological individualism'. Forward-thinking, the book highlights the need for a rule of law in cultural evolution to prevent harm to others and allow a greater freedom of choice when deciding future actions. Providing an in-depth explanation of why the social sciences are needed and highlighting the task of a social scientist, this book will be invaluable for researchers in the fields of politics, economics and sociology. (shrink)

Social science, history, and philosophy have often been neglect in thinking through their fundamentally intertwined relationship. The result is often an inattention to philosophy where social science and history is concerned, or a neglect of historicity and social analysis where philosophy is concerned. Meanwhile, the place of values in research is often uneasily passed over in silence. The inattention to, and loss of, the intersection between these different disciplines and their subject matters, leaves our investigations (...) all the more impoverished as a result. In resolving these problems, it is not enough to strive for cooperation or integration, but to rethink of the nature of the disciplines themselves; their interests, purposes, and presuppositions. In this volume, contributors explore different facets of these relationships, and move beyond the problematics erected by positivism often cast in terms of value-free or value-neutral science, that is, a science obsessed with empirical data, schematic classifications, and the pursuit of law-like forms. While positivism has been subject to critique, the influence and legacy of positivism remains. It remains in the way in which we often think about science; the line drawn between the sciences and the humanities; the norms researchers should follow; what a successful explanation looks like; and the ethical, normative, and political implications of scientific research. Aimed at students and researchers of philosophy, history and the social sciences, this book is driven by a desire to revindicate questions concerning ontology and social ontology, to rethink the nature of explanation, and to resituate normativity and values within scientific, social scientific, and historical pursuits. (shrink)

This book is an inter-disciplinary volume based on collaborative research in the humanities and social sciences that explores the benefits of historical understanding in leading disciplines, including History, Politics, Literature, Economics, Anthropology, Law, Sociology, and Philosophy.

Mario Bunge, author of the monumental Treatise on Basic Philosophy, is widely renowned as a philosopher of science. In this new and ambitious work he shifts his attention to the social sciences and the social technologies. He considers a number of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, economics, political science, law, history, and management science. Bunge contends that social science research has fallen prey to a postmodern fascination with irrationalism and relativism. He urges social scientists to (...) re-examine the philosophy and the methodology at the base of their discipline. Bunge calls for objective and relevant fact-finding, rigorous theorizing, and empirical testing, as well as morally sensitive and socially responsible policy design. (shrink)

This book highlights not only aspects of the career of Everett Mendelsohn, one of the premier historians of biology of our age, but also a wide range of topics that are now grouped under the general heading of science studies. This broad collection includes articles on the relations between science and the military, science as narrative, natural history and conservation, Marxism and science, the Human Genome Project, and the relation of philosophy to the study of embryonic development in the (...) 18th century. This book is essential not only for those who admire Professor Mendelsohn's work but also for those who want a slice of the current field of science studies. Audience: The main readership of this volume consists of historians of science, technology, and medicine, and sociologists of science. The book will also appeal to philosophers of science and biologists. Those interested in Middle Eastern studies will find the discussion of Professor Mendelsohn's political work in this area, as well as the article dealing with his activism in general, of considerable interest. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: References.

Struever argues that White's emphasis on language, use of tropology, and adherence to formalism render his theory ahistorical. However, like White, she fails to define either her terms or her rationale for contrasting tropological with topological rhetoric, fails to take responsibility for our times, and fails to delineate clearly her views on the dynamics of history. What is required is further research and elaboration of White's tropal philosophy. A program for this study includes the clarification of a rhetoric for (...) inquiry, of tropes, and of elective affinity. These concepts should then be applied systematically to the disciplines of social science and to philosophy of history. White's concept of irony must also be isolated, sorted, and examined for its resistance to isolation and sorting. Finally, one must address the principles of politics which underlie these concepts, this text, and ultimately texts in general. (shrink)

Divided into two parts this book examines the train of social theory from the 19th century, through to the `organization of modernity', in relation to ideas of social planning, and as contributors to the `rationalistic revolution' of the `golden age' of capitalism in the 1950s and 60s. Part two examines key concepts in the social sciences. It begins with some of the broadest concepts used by social scientists: choice, decision, action and institution and moves on (...) to examine the `collectivist alternative': the concepts of society, culture and polity, which are often dismissed as untenable by postmodernists today. This is a major contribution to contemporary social theory and provides a host of essential insights into the task of social science today. (shrink)

The 1920s and 30s were key decades for the history of American social science. The success of such quantitative disciplines as economics and psychology during World War I forced social scientists to reexamine their methods and practices and to consider recasting their field as a more objective science separated from its historical foundation in social reform. The debate that ensued, fiercely conducted in books, articles, correspondence, and even presidential addresses, made its way into every aspect of (...) social science thought of the period and is the subject of this book. Mark C. Smith first provides a historical overview of the controversy over the nature and future of the social sciences in early twentieth-century America and, then through a series of intellectual biographies, offers an intensive study of the work and lives of major figures who participated in this debate. Using an extensive range of materials, from published sources to manuscript collections, Smith examines "objectivists"--economist Wesley Mitchell and political scientist Charles Merriam--and the more "purposive thinkers"--historian Charles Beard, sociologist Robert Lynd, and political scientist and neo-Freudian Harold Lasswell. He shows how the debate over objectivity and social purpose was central to their professional and personal lives as well as to an understanding of American social science between the two world wars. These biographies bring to vivid life a contentious moment in American intellectual history and reveal its significance in the shaping of social science in this country. (shrink)

This ambitious critical history of the variety of disciplines we group together as the social sciences argues that the defining characteristic of social science, both historically and in the present, is ideology. Based originally on a flawed ideal of science, the 'social sciences' have incorporated and refined a set of assumptions about the nature of state and society, assumptions which have been institutionalized with the growth of modern universities. The book is in three main (...) parts. It deals firstly with the history of certain key ides from the early modern period, before exploring the institutional and social features which have shaped the emergence of modern social science. Manicas goes on to reveal the ideological component of mainstream social science, concluding by suggesting and alternative realist philosophy for the future. Rigorous in scholarship and engaging in presentation, the book offers a brilliant combination of wide-ranging historical scholarship and a firm location in the current theoretical dilemmas of the social sciences. (shrink)

Richard Harvey Brown's pioneering explorations in the philosophy of social science and the theory of rhetoric reach a culmination in Social Science as Civic Discourse. In his earlier works, he argued for a logic of discovery and explanation in social science by showing that science and art both depend on metaphoric thinking, and he has applied that logic to society as a narrative text in which significant action by moral agents is possible. This new work is at (...) once a philosophical critique of social theory and a social-theoretical critique of politics. Brown proposes to redirect the language and the mission of the social sciences toward a new discourse for a humane civic practice. (shrink)

Scott Gordon provides a magisterial review of the historical development of the social sciences from their beginnings in renaissance Italy to the present day.

Understanding in its widest sense is the aim of all rational knowledge. A distinction can be made between interpretation (leading to the understanding of meanings) and explanation (leading to the understanding of facts). The view that in the social sciences facts and meanings are the same is criticized. In respect of the specific understanding of human and social facts empathetic and rational understanding are distinguished and some of the difficulties pointed out inherent in both, in particular with (...) regard to testability. On the other hand, it is found that a purely behaviouristic approach, although possible, would not be completely satisfactory, so that in spite of all difficulties the social sciences (history included) cannot do without specific understanding, as a heuristic device as well as an aim. (shrink)

This is an expanded and thoroughly revised edition of the widely adopted introduction to the philosophical foundations of the human sciences. Ranging from cultural anthropology to mathematical economics, Alexander Rosenberg leads the reader through behaviorism, naturalism, interpretativism about human action, and macrosocial scientific perspectives, illuminating the motivation and strategy of each.Rewritten throughout to increase accessibility, this new edition retains the remarkable achievement of revealing the social sciences’ enduring relation to the fundamental problems of philosophy. It includes new (...) discussions of positivism, European philosophy of history, causation, statistical laws, quantitative models, and postempiricist social science, along with a completely updated literature guide that keys chapters to widely anthologized papers. (shrink)

Judgments of explanatory exclusion are a necessary part of the explanatory practice of any historian or social scientist. In this article, the author argues that all explanatory exclusion results from mutual explanatory incompatibility of some sort. Different types of exclusion arise primarily as a result of the different elements composing "an explanation." Of most philosophical interest are judgments of explanatory exclusion resulting from the incompatibility of explanatory relevance claims. The author demonstrates that an ontic theory of explanation is necessary (...) to make sense of this type of exclusion and in so doing develops an analysis similar to Jaegwon Kim’s well-known analysis of explanatory exclusion. To conclude, the author demonstrates the differences and connections between Kim’s analysis and his own. Key Words: explanation • social science • history • exclusion • compatibility. (shrink)

Explanatory pluralism has been defended by several philosophers of history and social science, recently, for example, by Tor Egil Førland in this journal. In this article, we provide a better argument for explanatory pluralism, based on the pragmatist idea of epistemic interests. Second, we show that there are three quite different senses in which one can be an explanatory pluralist: one can be a pluralist about questions, a pluralist about answers to questions, and a pluralist about both. We (...) defend the last position. Finally, our third aim is to argue that pluralism should not be equated with “anything goes”: we will argue for non-relativistic explanatory pluralism. This pluralism will be illustrated by examples from history and social science in which different forms of explanation (for example, structural, functional, and intentional explanations) are discussed, and the fruitfulness of our framework for understanding explanatory pluralism is shown. (shrink)

Possibilities haunt history. The force of our explanations of events turns on the alternative possibilities these explanations suggest. It is these possible worlds which give us our understanding; and in human affairs we decide them by practical rather than theoretical judgement. In his widely acclaimed account of the role of counterfactuals in explanation, Geoffrey Hawthorn deploys extended examples from history and modern times to defend his argument. His conclusions cast doubt on existing assumptions about the nature and place (...) of theory, and indeed of the possibility of knowledge itself, in the human sciences. (shrink)

Part of a collective project for promoting the study of the history of political ideas within the field of the social sciences in French academia, this interview focuses on method, and more specifically on Prof. Quentin Skinner's relationship to the social sciences (from Max Weber to Peter Winch and Pierre Bourdieu). Questions were sent in French, via email, to Quentin Skinner, who answered them in English. The answers were then translated into French and the interview (...) was published in Vers une histoire sociale des idées politiques, ed. Chloé Gaboriaux and Arnault Skornicki (Villeneuve d'Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2017). For editorial reasons, one question and response, regarding method in the Italian tradition of the history of ideas, had to be omitted; it is reintroduced here. The questions have been translated for Theoria by Victor Lu. Quentin Skinner is Emeritus Professor in the Humanities at Queen Mary University of London and co-director of the Centre for the Study of the History of Political Thought (London); Arnault Skornicki is Senior Lecturer at Paris Nanterre University (Institut des Sciences Sociales du Politique); and Jérémie Barthas is Researcher at the CNRS (Institut d'Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine). (shrink)

The social sciences face a problem of sample non-representation, where the majority of samples consist of undergraduate students from Euro-American institutions. The problem has been identified for decades with little trend of improvement. In this paper, I trace the history of sampling theory. The dominant framework, called the design-based approach, takes random sampling as the gold standard. The idea is that a sampling procedure that is maximally uninformative prevents samplers from introducing arbitrary bias, thus preserving sample representation. (...) I show how this framework, while good in theory, faces many challenges in application. Instead, I advocate for an alternative framework, called the model-based approach to sampling, where representative samples are those balanced in composition, however they were drawn. I argue that the model-based framework is more appropriate in the social sciences because it allows for systematic assessment of imperfect samples and methodical improvement in resource-limited scientific contexts. I end with practical proposals of improving sample quality in the social sciences. (shrink)

The social sciences are predominantly seen by their practitioners as critical endeavours, which should inform criticism of harmful institutions, beliefs and practices. Accordingly, political attacks on the social sciences are often interpreted as revealing an unwillingness to accept criticism and an acquiescence with the status quo. But this dominant view of the political implications of social scientific knowledge misses the fact that people can also be outraged by what they see as its apologetic potential, namely (...) that it provides excuses or justifications for people doing bad things, preventing them from being rightfully blamed and punished. This introduction to the special issue sketches the long history of debates about the exculpatory and justificatory consequences of social science and lays the foundations for a theory of social scientific apologia by examining three main aspects: what social and cognitive processes motivate this type of accusation, how social theorists respond to it and whether different contexts of circulation of ideas affect how these controversies unfold. (shrink)

In the increasing body of metatheoretical literature on "causal mechanisms," definitions of "mechanism" proliferate, and these increasingly divergent definitions reproduce older theoretical and methodological oppositions. The reason for this proliferation is the incompatibility of the various metatheoretical expectations directed to them: (1) to serve as an alternative to the scientific theory of individual behavior (for some social theorists, most notably Jon Elster); (2) to provide solutions for causal inference problems in the quantitative social sciences, in social (...) history, and in the (3) qualitative research context; and (4) to serve as an alternative for narratives (Charles Tilly). Mechanisms can do (1) only as under-specified law-like regularities, deliver (2) as robust generative processes represented by models, and accomplish (3) as fragile generative processes (stories), but these are not all compatible. (edited). (shrink)

Post-modernism offers a revolutionary approach to the study of society: in questioning the validity of modern science and the notion of objective knowledge, this movement discards history, rejects humanism, and resists any truth claims. In this comprehensive assessment of post-modernism, Pauline Rosenau traces its origins in the humanities and describes how its key concepts are today being applied to, and are restructuring, the social sciences. Serving as neither an opponent nor an apologist for the movement, she cuts (...) through post-modernism's often incomprehensible jargon in order to offer all readers a lucid exposition of its propositions. Rosenau shows how the post-modern challenge to reason and rational organization radiates across academic fields. For example, in psychology it questions the conscious, logical, coherent subject; in public administration it encourages a retreat from central planning and from reliance on specialists; in political science it calls into question the authority of hierarchical, bureaucratic decision-making structures that function in carefully defined spheres; in anthropology it inspires the protection of local, primitive cultures from First World attempts to reorganize them. In all of the social sciences, she argues, post-modernism repudiates representative democracy and plays havoc with the very meaning of "left-wing" and "right-wing." Rosenau also highlights how post-modernism has inspired a new generation of social movements, ranging from New Age sensitivities to Third World fundamentalism. In weighing its strengths and weaknesses, the author examines two major tendencies within post-modernism, the largely European, skeptical form and the predominantly Anglo-North-American form, which suggests alternative political, social, and cultural projects. She draws examples from anthropology, economics, geography, history, international relations, law, planning, political science, psychology, sociology, urban studies, and women's studies, and provides a glossary of post-modern terms to assist the uninitiated reader with special meanings not found in standard dictionaries. (shrink)

The paper deals with the state of the social sciences after the boom of internet services in the Czech Republic in the 1990s. The results of our survey, based on 512 responses from the economics and history departments of major Czech public universities, show that internet services are considered a quality factor for academic output; however, the issues of plagiarism, a lack of resource criticism, inadequacy of impact factor-based evaluations, poor academic training for the new generation of (...) social scientists, the failure of state academic policy, and the generation gap make further development in the Czech social sciences rather problematic. As a result we recommend creating a better communication link between policy makers and scholars, reforming the current state policy which encourages lower quality academic output, and improving academic training, which requires a more individual approach, and also placing higher demands on social scientists. (shrink)

In recent years, social scientists have turned their critical lens on the historical roots and contours of their disciplines, including their politics and practices, epistemologies and methods, institutionalization and professionalization, national development and colonial expansion, globalization and local contestations, and their public presence and role in society. The Social Sciences in the Looking Glass offers current social scientific perspectives on this reflexive moment in the social sciences. Examining sociology, anthropology, philosophy, political science, legal theory, (...) and religious studies, the volume's contributors outline the present transformations of the social sciences, explore their connections with critical humanities, analyze the challenges of alternate paradigms, and interrogate recent endeavors to move beyond the human. Throughout, the authors, who belong to half a dozen disciplines, trace how the social sciences are thoroughly entangled in the social facts they analyze, and are key to helping us understand the conditions of our world. Contributors. Chitralekha, Jean-Louis Fabiani, Didier Fassin, Johan Heilbron, Miriam Kingsberg Kadia, Kristoffer Kropp, Nicolas Langlitz, John Lardas Modern, Álvaro Morcillo Laiz, Amín Pérez, Carel Smith, George Steinmetz, Peter D. Thomas, Bregje van Eekelen, Agata Zysiak. (shrink)

Hermeneutic philosophies of social science offer an approach to the philosophy of social science foregrounding the human subject and including attention to history as well as a methodological reflection on the notion of reflection, including the intrusions of distortions and prejudice. Hermeneutic philosophies of social science offer an explicit orientation to and concern with the subject of the human and social sciences. Hermeneutic philosophies of the social science represented in the present collection of (...) essays draw inspiration from Gadamer’s work as well as from Paul Ricoeur in addition to Michel de Certeau and Michel Foucault among others. Special attention is given to Wilhelm Dilthey in addition to the broader phenomenological traditions of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger as well as the history of philosophy in Plato and Descartes. The volume is indispensible reading for students and scholars interested in epistemology, philosophy of science, social social studies of knowledge as well as social studies of technology. (shrink)

Social sciences seek to understand and explain human existence in all its complexity. Thus they encompass the study of individual consciousness and behavior, social relations and cultural practices, social systems, and structural forces. Investigations of these diverse phenomena proceed in accordance with modes of inquiry sanctioned by the academic disciplines of anthropology, archaeology, cultural studies, economics, geography, history, political science, psychology, sociology, and women's studies.

John Gerring's exceptional textbook has been thoroughly revised in this second edition. It offers a one-volume introduction to social science methodology relevant to the disciplines of anthropology, economics, history, political science, psychology and sociology. This new edition has been extensively developed with the introduction of new material and a thorough treatment of essential elements such as conceptualization, measurement, causality and research design. It is written for students, long-time practitioners and methodologists and covers both qualitative and quantitative methods. It (...) synthesizes the vast and diverse field of methodology in a way that is clear, concise and comprehensive. While offering a handy overview of the subject, the book is also an argument about how we should conceptualize methodological problems. Thinking about methodology through this lens provides a new framework for understanding work in the social sciences. (shrink)

Forty-two essays by authors from five continents and many disciplines provide a synthetic account of the history of the social sciences-including behavioral and economic sciences since the late eighteenth century. The authors emphasize the cultural and intellectual preconditions of social science, and its contested but important role in the history of the modern world. While there are many historical books on particular disciplines, there are very few about the social sciences generally, and (...) none that deal with so much of the world over so long a timespan. (shrink)

This paper presents the history of the Frankfurt School’s inclusion of normative concerns in social science research programs during the period 1930-1955. After examining the relevant methodology, I present a model of how such a program could look today. I argue that such an approach is both valuable to contemporary social science programs and overlooked by current philosophers and social scientists.

Research Methodology for Social Sciences provides guidelines for designing and conducting evidence-based research in social sciences and interdisciplinary studies using both qualitative and quantitative data. Blending the particularity of different sub-disciplines and interdisciplinary nature of social sciences, this volume: Provides insights on epistemological issues and deliberates on debates over qualitative research methods; Covers different aspects of qualitative research techniques and evidence-based research techniques including survey design, choice of sample, construction of indices, statistical inferences, and (...) data analysis; Discusses concepts, techniques, and tools at different stages of research beginning with design of field surveys to collect raw data and then to analyze the data using statistical and econometric methods; With illustrations, examples and a reader friendly approach, this volume will serve as a key reference material for compulsory research methodology courses at Doctoral levels across different disciplines like Economics, Sociology, Women's Studies, Education, Anthropology, Political Science, International Relations, Philosophy, History, Business Management and the like. This volume will also be indispensable for post-graduate courses dealing with quantitative techniques and data analysis. (shrink)

Continental Philosophy of Social Science demonstrates the unique and autonomous nature of the continental approach to social science and contrasts it with the Anglo-American tradition. Yvonne Sherratt argues for the importance of an historical understanding of the Continental tradition in order to appreciate its individual, humanist character. Examining the key traditions of hermeneutic, genealogy, and critical theory, and the texts of major thinkers such as Gadamer, Ricoeur, Derrida, Nietzsche, Foucault, the Early Frankfurt School and Habermas, she also contextualizes (...) contemporary developments within strands of thought stemming back to Ancient Greece and Rome. Sherratt shows how these modes of thinking developed through medieval Christian thought into the Enlightenment and Romantic eras, before becoming mainstays of twentieth-century disciplines. Continental Philosophy of Social Science will serve as the essential textbook for courses in philosophy or social sciences. (shrink)

This article brings together the history of the social sciences and the history of social thought in Socialist Romania. It is concerned with the development of ideas about the social beyond collectivism, especially about the relationship between individual and society under socialism, from the early 1960s to the end of the 1970s. The analysis speaks to three major themes in the current historiography of Cold War social science. First, the article investigates the role (...) of disciplinary specialization in the advancement of new ideas about the social in the postwar period. Specifically, it asks how the debate over the relationship between sociology and Marxism-Leninism has challenged ideas about collectivism from Stalinist social science. Second, the article shows how social practice, individual and collective agency, and people's subjectivities became theoretically relevant in the 1960s, and how they were integrated, via empirical sociological research, into the reworked conceptual apparatus of post-Stalinist Marxism-Leninism. This complicates accounts about the role of quantification and theorization in postwar social science by foregrounding the intense reflection on the role of empirical research in sociology under state socialism. Third, the article shows how the relationship between individual and society became a topic of interest across social sciences in the 1960s and 1970s. The Marxist humanist approach to the social, although it never achieved the institutional status of a distinct discipline, adds an important perspective from East Central Europe to the existing historiography of the ‘thinning’ of the social in social sciences and social thought beginning in the 1950s. (shrink)

As a philosopher, Richard McKeon spent his career developing Pragmatism in a new key, specifically by tracing the ways in which philosophic problems arise in fields other than philosophy—across the natural and social sciences and aesthetics—and showed the ways in which any problem, pushed back to its beginning or taken to its end, is a philosophic problem. The roots of this book, On Knowing—The Social Sciences, are traced to McKeon’s classes where he blended philosophy with physics, (...) ethics, politics, history, and aesthetics. This volume—the second in a series—leaves behind natural science themes to embrace freedom, power, and history, which, McKeon argues, lay out the whole field of human action. The authors McKeon considers—Hobbes, Machiavelli, Spinoza, Kant, and J. S. Mill—show brilliantly how philosophic methods work in action, via analyses that do not merely reduce or deconstruct meaning, but enhance those texts by reconnecting them to the active history of philosophy and to problems of ethics, politics, and history. The waves of modernism and post-modernism are receding. Philosophic pluralism is now available, fully formulated, in McKeon’s work, spreading from the humanities to the social sciences. (shrink)

This book brings together the research of philosophers and social scientists. It examines those areas of scientific practice where reliance on the subjective judgment of experts and practitioners is the main source of useful knowledge to address, and, possibly, bring solutions to social problems. A common phenomenon in applications of science is that objective evidence does not point to a single answer, or solution, to a problem. Reliance on subjective judgment, then, becomes necessary, despite the known fact that (...) hunches, even those of putative experts, often provide information that is not very accurate, and that experts are prone to fallacies and biases. The book looks at how experts reach consensus in the social sciences, and which experts are relevant to which problems. This book offers the ingredients for building a normative theory of expertise on the basis of the evidence that social scientists and philosophers have uncovered. (shrink)

Community detection is a major issue in network analysis. This paper combines a socio-historical approach with an experimental reconstruction of programs to investigate the early automation of clique detection algorithms, which remains one of the unsolved NP-complete problems today. The research led by the archaeologist Jean-Claude Gardin from the 1950s on non-numerical information and graph analysis is retraced to demonstrate the early contributions of social sciences and humanities. The limited recognition and reception of Gardin's innovative computer application to (...) the humanities are addressed through two factors, in addition to the effects of historiography and bibliographies on the recording, discoverability, and reuse of scientific productions: (1) funding policies, evidenced by the transfer of research effort on graph applications from temporary interdisciplinary spaces to disciplinary organizations related to the then-emerging field of computer science; and (2) the erratic careers of algorithms, in which efficiency, flaws, corrections, and authors’ status, were determining factors. (shrink)

This chapter explores how science and technology studies (STS) have evolved over the past generation. It surveys the contrasting perspectives of philosophers, sociologists, scholars of the humanities, wider publics, and scientists themselves. It describes contrasting views about the practice and purpose for studying the history of science. -/- ISBN 978-1-85168-681-0.

Written with the suppression of the Tunisian students by their own government in view, Michel Foucault’s March 1968 ‘Linguistics and Social Sciences’ opens up a new horizon of historical inquiry and epitomises Foucault’s abiding interest in formulating new methods for studying the interaction of language and power. Translated into English for the first time by Jonathan D.S. Schroeder and Chantal Wright, this remarkable lecture constitutes Foucault’s most explicit and sustained statement of his project to revolutionise history by (...) transposing the analysis of logical relations into the history of knowledge. (shrink)

Continental Philosophy of Social Science demonstrates the unique and autonomous nature of the continental approach to social science and contrasts it with the Anglo-American tradition. Yvonne Sherratt argues for the importance of an historical understanding of the Continental tradition in order to appreciate its individual, humanist character. Examining the key traditions of hermeneutic, genealogy, and critical theory, and the texts of major thinkers such as Gadamer, Ricoeur, Derrida, Nietzsche, Foucault, the Early Frankfurt School and Habermas, she also contextualizes (...) contemporary developments within strands of thought stemming back to Ancient Greece and Rome. Sherratt shows how these modes of thinking developed through medieval Christian thought into the Enlightenment and Romantic eras, before becoming mainstays of twentieth-century disciplines. Continental Philosophy of Social Science will serve as the essential textbook for courses in philosophy or social sciences. (shrink)

A comparative study of the system of co-evolution of Theoretical Genetics, practical Selets and agriculture in Russia, Ukraine, the Soviet Union and, above all, the example of two research schools - Kharkov and Saratov. Alittle-known and previously unknown archival materials are used.