1st Edition
The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Social Science
The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Social Science is an outstanding guide to the major themes, movements, debates, and topics in the philosophy of social science. It includes thirty-seven newly written chapters, by many of the leading scholars in the field, as well as a comprehensive introduction by the editors. Insofar as possible, the material in this volume is presented in accessible language, with an eye toward undergraduate and graduate students who may be coming to some of this material for the first time. Scholars too will appreciate this clarity, along with the chance to read about the latest advances in the discipline. The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Social Science is broken up into four parts.
- Historical and Philosophical Context
- Concepts
- Debates
- Individual Sciences
Edited by two of the leading scholars in the discipline, this volume is essential reading for anyone interested in the philosophy of social science, and its many areas of connection and overlap with key debates in the philosophy of science.
Part I. Historical and philosophical context
- Comte and the Positivist Vision
- Durkheim and the Methods of Scientific Sociology
- Verstehen and the Reaction Against Positivism
- The Development of Logical Empiricism
- Kuhn’s Influence on the Social Sciences
- Popper’s Influence on the Social Sciences
- Interpretation and Critical Theory
- The Empirical Counter-Revolution
- Explanation
- Reductionism
- Emergence
- Methodological Individualism
- Functionalism
- Naturalism
- Game Theory
- Situational Analysis
- Bias in Social Scientific Experimentation
- Causal Inference and Modeling
- Collective Intentionality
- Microfoundations, Mechanism, and Causal Powers
- Social Ontology
Vincent Guillin
Warren Schmaus
Brian Fay
Thomas Uebel
K. Brad Wray
Jeremy Shearmur
Ken Baynes
Jaakko Kuorikoski
Part II. Concepts
David Henderson
Harold Kincaid
Julie Zahle
Petri Ylikoski
Alex Rosenberg
David Livingstone Smith
Cristina Bicchieri & Giacomo Sillari
Kevin D. Hoover
Sharon Crasnow
Tuukka Kaidesoja
Kirk Ludwig & Marija Jankovic
Dan Little
Brian Epstein
Biography
Lee McIntyre is a Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and an Instructor in Ethics at Harvard Extension School. He is the author of several books, including Respecting Truth: Willful Ignorance in the Internet Age (Routledge 2015) and Dark Ages: The Case for a Science of Human Behavior (MIT Press, 2006).
Alex Rosenberg is an American philosopher and the R. Taylor Cole Professor of Philosophy at Duke University. Rosenberg has written many books, including The Atheist s Guide to Reality. The Girl from Krakow is his first novel. It is based on the experiences of several individuals through the 1930s and World War II.
A state-of-the-art collection of original essays by the best writers in the field of history and philosophy of the social sciences.
--Merrilee H. Salmon, University of Pittsburgh