The Rise of the Social Sciences and the Formation of Modernity

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-vii

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2. The Rise of the Social Sciences and the Formation of Modernity

   • Björn Wittrock, Johan Heilbron, Lars Magnusson

   Pages 1-33

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3. The Enlightenment and the French Revolutionary Birth Pangs of Modernity

   • Robert Wokler

   Pages 35-76

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4. French Moralists and the Anthropology of the Modern Era: On the Genesis of the Notions of ‘Interest’ and ‘Commercial Society’

   • Johan Heilbron

   Pages 77-106

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5. The Construction of the Social Sciences in Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century Germany

   • Peter Hanns Reill

   Pages 107-140

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6. The Transformation of Philosophy

   • Randall Collins

   Pages 141-161

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7. The Language of Mercantilism: The English Economic Discussion during the Seventeenth Century

   • Lars Magnusson

   Pages 163-188

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8. Natural Law and the Origins of Nationalökonomie: L.H. von Jakob

   • Keith Tribe

   Pages 189-205

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9. Mathematics, Administrative Reform and Social Sciences in France at the End of the Eighteenth Century

   • Éric Brian

   Pages 207-224

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10. From Political Arithmetic to Social Statistics: How Some Nineteenth-Century Roots of the Social Sciences were Implanted

    • Michael Donnelly

    Pages 225-239

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11. Certainty and Order, Liberty and Contingency. The Birth of Social Science as Empirical Political Philosophy

    • Peter Wagner

    Pages 241-263

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12. Back Matter

    Pages 265-296

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This volume offers one of the first systematic analyses of the rise of modern social science. Contrary to the standard accounts of various social science disciplines, the essays in this volume demonstrate that modern social science actually emerged during the critical period between 1750 and 1850. It is shown that the social sciences were a crucial element in the conceptual and epistemic revolution, which parallelled and partly underpinned the political and economic transformations of the modern world.
From a consistently comparative perspective, a group of internationally leading scholars takes up fundamental issues such as the role of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution in the shaping of the social sciences, the changing relationships between political theory and moral discourse, the profound transformation of philosophy, and the constitution of political economy and statistics.

• anthropology
• freedom
• Germany
• law
• liberty
• morality
• philosophy
• political philosophy
• political theory

• Centre Lillois d’Études et de Recherches Sociologiques et Économiques, France

  Johan Heilbron

• Uppsala University, Sweden

  Lars Magnusson

• Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden

  Björn Wittrock

• Stockholm University, Sweden

  Björn Wittrock

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