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The Search for a Methodology of Social Science

Durkheim, Weber, and the Nineteenth-Century Problem of Cause, Probability, and Action

  • Book
  • © 1986

Overview

Authors:
  1. Stephen P. Turner

    1. Department of Sociology, University of South Florida, USA

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Part of the book series: Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science (BSPS, volume 92)

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Table of contents (12 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xv
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  2. The Earlier Conversation

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1
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    2. Two Generations

      • Stephen P. Turner
      Pages 3-5

    3. Beyond the Enlightenment: Comte and the New Problem of Social Science

      • Stephen P. Turner
      Pages 6-28

    4. Mill and ‘The Ascent to Causes’

      • Stephen P. Turner
      Pages 29-59

    5. Quetelet: Rates and their Explanation

      • Stephen P. Turner
      Pages 60-91

    6. The Interregnum

      • Stephen P. Turner
      Pages 92-104

  3. Durkheim as a Methodologist

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 105-105
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    2. Realism, Teleology, and Action

      • Stephen P. Turner
      Pages 107-123

    3. Collective Forces, Causation, and Probability

      • Stephen P. Turner
      Pages 124-143

    4. Durkheim’s Individual

      • Stephen P. Turner
      Pages 144-160

  4. Weber on Action

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 161-161
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    2. Objective Possibility and Adequate Cause

      • Stephen P. Turner
      Pages 163-179

    3. Rationality and Action

      • Stephen P. Turner
      Pages 180-197

    4. Large-Scale Explanations: Aggregation and Interpretation

      • Stephen P. Turner
      Pages 198-218

    5. The End of the Ascent

      • Stephen P. Turner
      Pages 219-227

  5. Back Matter

    Pages 228-255
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Keywords

About this book

Stephen Turner has explored the ongms of social science in this pioneering study of two nineteenth century themes: the search for laws of human social behavior, and the accumulation and analysis of the facts of such behavior through statistical inquiry. The disputes were vigorously argued; they were over questions of method, criteria of explanation, interpretations of probability, understandings of causation as such and of historical causation in particular, and time and again over the ways of using a natural science model. From his careful elucidation of John Stuart Mill's proposals for the methodology of the social sciences on to his original analysis of the methodological claims and practices of Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, Turner has beautifully traced the conflict between statistical sociology and a science offactual description on the one side, and causal laws and a science of nomological explanation on the other. We see the works of Comte and Quetelet, the critical observations of Herschel, Buckle, Venn and Whewell, and the tough scepticism of Pearson, all of these as essential to the works of the classical founders of sociology. With Durkheim's essay on Suicide and Weber's monograph on The Protestant Ethic, Turner provides both philosophical analysis to demonstrate the continuing puzzles over cause and probability and also a perceptive and wry account of just how the puzzles of our late twentieth century are of a piece with theirs. The terms are still familiar: reasons vs.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Department of Sociology, University of South Florida, USA

    Stephen P. Turner

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: The Search for a Methodology of Social Science

  • Book Subtitle: Durkheim, Weber, and the Nineteenth-Century Problem of Cause, Probability, and Action

  • Authors: Stephen P. Turner

  • Series Title: Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3461-5

  • Publisher: Springer Dordrecht

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

  • Copyright Information: Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 1986

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-90-277-2067-2Published: 28 February 1986

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-90-481-8417-0Published: 25 December 2010

  • eBook ISBN: 978-94-017-3461-5Published: 09 March 2013

  • Series ISSN: 0068-0346

  • Series E-ISSN: 2214-7942

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XV, 255

  • Topics: Philosophy of the Social Sciences, History, general

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