The Evolution Of The Social Sciences

This book charts the development of the main social sciences_religion, history, philosophy, law, sociology, anthropology, and economics_through an examination of the lives and works of each discipline's key historical figures.

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.

This compact volume covers the main developments in the social sciences since the Second World War. Chapters on economics, human geography, political science, psychology, social anthropology, and sociology will interest anyone wanting short, accessible histories of those disciplines, all written by experts in the relevant field; they will also make it easy for readers to make comparisons between disciplines. A final chapter proposes a blueprint for a history of the social sciences as a whole. Whereas most of the existing literature considers the social sciences in isolation from one other, this volume shows that they have much in common; for example, they have responded to common problems using overlapping methods, and cross-disciplinary activities have been widespread.

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 (assessing thinkers from Hobbes and Marx to Hegel, Weber, and Kuhn), 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.

Evolution is among the most central and most contested of ideas in the history of anthropology. This book charts the fortunes of the idea from the mid-nineteenth century to recent times. By comparing biological, historical, and anthropological approaches to the study of human culture and social life, it lays the foundation for their effective synthesis. Far ahead of its time when first published, the book anticipates debates at the forefront of contemporary thinking. Revisiting the work after almost thirty years, Tim Ingold offers a substantial new preface that describes how the book came to be written, how it was received and its bearing on later developments. Unique in scope and breadth of theoretical vision, Evolution and Social Life cuts across the boundaries of natural science and the humanities to provide a major contribution both to the history of anthropological and social thought, and to contemporary debate on the relationship between human nature, culture, and social life.

First published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

A complete account of evolutionary thought in the social, environmental and policy sciences, creating bridges with biology.

This volume brings together a collection of seven articles previously published by the author, with a new introduction reframing the articles in the context of past and present questions in anthropology, psychology and human evolution. It promotes the perspective of ‘integrated’ social science, in which social science questions are addressed in a deliberately eclectic manner, combining results and models from evolutionary biology, experimental psychology, economics, anthropology and history. It thus constitutes a welcome contribution to a gradually emerging approach to social science based on E. O. Wilson’s concept of ‘consilience’. Human Cultures through the Scientific Lens spans a wide range of topics, from an examination of ritual behaviour, integrating neuro-science, ethology and anthropology to explain why humans engage in ritual actions (both cultural and individual), to the motivation of conflicts between groups. As such, the collection gives readers a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the applications of an evolutionary paradigm in the social sciences. This volume will be a useful resource for scholars and students in the social sciences (particularly psychology, anthropology, evolutionary biology and the political sciences), as well as a general readership interested in the social sciences.