Philosophy of Social Science

Philosophy of Social Science provides a tightly argued yet accessible introduction to the philosophical foundations of the human sciences, including economics, anthropology, sociology, political science, psychology, history, and the disciplines emerging at the intersections of these subjects with biology. Philosophy is unavoidable for social scientists because the choices they make in their disciplines force them to take sides on philosophical matters. Conversely, the philosophy of social science is equally necessary for philosophers since the social sciences must inform their understanding of human action, norms, and social institutions. The third edition retains an illuminating interpretation of the enduring relations between the conduct of inquiry in the social sciences and the fundamental problems of philosophy, with accessible considerations of positivism, European philosophy of history, causation, statistical laws, quantitative models, and postempiricist social science, and it reflects developments in social research over the past two decades that have informed debate in the philosophy of social science.