The Logic of Theoretical Sociology
The Logic of Theoretical Sociology: An Historical Assessment
English | 2025 | ISBN: 3031917081 | 232 Pages | PDF EPUB (True) | 7 MB
English | 2025 | ISBN: 3031917081 | 232 Pages | PDF EPUB (True) | 7 MB
This book takes an historical view to explain how social science arrived at its current state and proposes solutions to its problems. This book shows the reader that theory is the method of the sciences. First it explains how the empiricism of J. S. Mill and R. A. Fisher has blocked the growth of theory-driven research. The myths of how science works, as proposed by T. Kuhn, have added another layer of obfuscation. Wholesale adoption of empiricist methods has produced the replication crisis – that most experimental findings cannot be replicated in economics and psychology and undoubtedly also in sociology. Without theory, the scope of research topics has constricted, resulting in what R. Merton feared, a balkanization of knowledge in sociology.