Brains/Practices/Relativism presents the first major rethinking of social theory in light of cognitive science. Stephen P. Turner focuses especially on connectionism, which views learning as a process of adaptation to input that, in turn, leads to patterns of response distinct to each individual. This means that there is no common server from which people download shared frameworks that enable them to cooperate or communicate. Therefore, argues Turner, practices - in the sense that the term is widely used in the social sciences and humanities - is a myth, and so are the cultures that are...

Brains/Practices/Relativism presents the first major rethinking of social theory in light of cognitive science. Stephen P. Turner focuses especially on connectionism, which views learning as a process of adaptation to input that, in turn, leads to patterns of response distinct to each individual. This means that there is no common server from which people download shared frameworks that enable them to cooperate or communicate. Therefore, argues Turner, practices - in the sense that the term is widely used in the social sciences and humanities - is a myth, and so are the cultures that are...

Over recent years there has been growing interest in the relations between academic intellectuals and professionals under the Nazi regime. Several works on Heidegger, Nazi doctors and Paul de Man have appeared. This book attempts to do for sociology what has been done for other fields: to demythologize the pre-war role of sociologists and provide a serious historical basis for reflection on it. The myth is simple: that the noble and clear-sighted Frankfurt School was expelled by Hitler and raised the consciousness of the west. The realities are considerably more complex. During and after the...

Max Weber: The Lawyer as Social Thinker aims to relate the categories of Weber's social thinking to the intellectual context of legal thinking and theory in which he was educated. Its interpretive aim is to show how knowledge of these relations illuminates our understanding of Weber's own intentions. By comparing Weber's social theory of the teleological kind favoured by his contemporaries, which sought to identify social purposes and their effects and realization in history, but rather to radically undermine the project of teleological social theory by replacing categories of description...

Max Weber is indubitably one of the very greatest figures in the history of the social sciences, the source of seminal concepts such as "the Protestant Ethic" and "modernity." Prominent as a founding father of sociology, Weber has been a major influence in the study of ancient history, religion, economics, law and cultural studies. In this Cambridge Companion a very distinguished international team of contributors introduces Weber's thought, examines some of the major controversies that have erupted, and shows how the intellectual issues Weber raised have developed since he wrote.

This Timely volume represents an attempt by leading practitioners in the field to think reflexively about the present state of social theory and its historical analogues, and to consider new directions opposed to the "classical" social theorists, as well as new uses of the classics. Social Theory and Sociology begins to address a problem that is salient for students as well as academics, namely, why and how does the legacy of social theory matter? What is the value of what we are learning?

No attempt is made to dodge these tough questions and some very different answers are...

The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of the Social Sciences collects newly commissioned essays that examine fundamental issues in the social sciences.

This is a jewel among methods handbooks, bringing together a formidable collection of international contributors to comment on every aspect of the various central issues, complications, and controversies in the core methodological traditions. It is designed to meet the needs of those disciplinary and nondisciplinary problem-oriented social inquirers for a comprehensive overview of the methodological literature. The text is divided into 7 sections: Overviews of methodological approaches in the social sciences Cases, comparisons, and theory Quantification and experiment Rationality, complexity...

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...

First published in 1980, this book examines the nature of sociological explanation. The tactics of interpretive sociology have often remained obscure because of confusion over the nature of the evidence for interpretation and the nature of decisions among alternative interpretations. In providing an account of the problem of interpretive sociological claims, the author argues that there is rationality to interpretation. He also presents a fresh view of the relationship between qualitative and statistical claims and shows their complementary character. Dr. Turner's lucid and comprehensive...