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The Natural Sciences and the Social Sciences

Some Critical and Historical Perspectives

  • Book
  • © 1994

Overview

Editors:
  1. I. Bernard Cohen

    1. Harvard University, USA

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Part of the book series: Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science (BSPS, volume 150)

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Table of contents (12 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xxxvi
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  3. Perspectives on the Relations between the Natural Sciences and the Social Sciences

    1. How Numerical Sociology Began by Counting Suicides: From Medical Pathology to Social Pathology

      • Ian Hacking
      Pages 101-133

    2. Probabilistic Thinking, the Natural Sciences and the Social Sciences: Changing Configurations (1800–1850)

      • Bernard-Pierre Lecuyer
      Pages 135-152

  4. Some Influences of the Natural Sciences on the Social Sciences

    1. The Scientific Revolution and the Social Sciences

      • I. Bernard Cohen
      Pages 153-203

    2. Blackstone’s “Newtonian” Dissent

      • Noel M. Swerdlow
      Pages 205-234

    3. From Political Economy to Market Mechanics: The Jevonian Moment in the History of Economics

      • Margaret Schabas
      Pages 235-255

    4. The Technology of Nature: Marx’s Thoughts on Darwin

      • Giuliano Pancaldi
      Pages 257-274

    5. Towards the Social Organism: Herbert Spencer and William B. Carpenter on the Analogical Method

      • Victor L. Hilts
      Pages 275-303

  7. Back Matter

    Pages 399-412
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Keywords

About this book

Natural Sciences and the Social Sciences contains a series of explorations of the different ways in which the social sciences have interacted with the natural sciences. Usually, such interactions are considered to go only `one way': from the natural to the social sciences. But there are several important essays in this volume which show how developments in the social sciences have affected the natural sciences - even the `hard' science of physics. Other essays deal with various types of interaction since the Scientific Revolution.
In his general introductory chapter, Cohen sets some general themes concerning analogies and homologies and the use of metaphors, drawing specific examples from the use of concepts of physics by marginalist economists and of developments in the life sciences by organismic sociologists. The remaining chapters, which explore the different ways in which the social sciences and the natural sciences have actually interacted, are written by leaders in the field of history of science, drawn from a wide range of countries and disciplines.
The book will be of great interest to all historians of science, philosophers interested in questions of methodology, economists and sociologists, and all social scientists concerned with the history of their subject and its foundations.

Editors and Affiliations

  • Harvard University, USA

    I. Bernard Cohen

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: The Natural Sciences and the Social Sciences

  • Book Subtitle: Some Critical and Historical Perspectives

  • Editors: I. Bernard Cohen

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

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3391-5

  • Publisher: Springer Dordrecht

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

  • Copyright Information: Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 1994

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-7923-2223-8Published: 30 November 1993

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-90-481-4258-3Published: 07 December 2010

  • eBook ISBN: 978-94-017-3391-5Published: 29 June 2013

  • Series ISSN: 0068-0346

  • Series E-ISSN: 2214-7942

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XXXVI, 404

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

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