Neil Gross
Biographic Data
| ID | 5533018 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Neil Gross |
| GIVEN NAMES | Neil |
| FAMILY NAME | Gross |
| SIGNATURE | GROSS N |
| AFFILIATIONS | Harvard University Press |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 117 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1,116 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 117 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
The Structure of Causal Chains
Sociologists are increasingly attentive to the mechanisms responsible for cause-and-effect relationships in the social world. But an aspect of mechanistic causality has not been sufficiently considered. It is well recognized that most phenomena of interest to social science result from multiple mechanisms operating in sequence. However, causal chains-sequentially linked mechanisms and their enabling background conditions-vary not just substantive…
Pragmatism and the study of large-scale social phenomena
Is There a “Ferguson Effect?” Google Searches, Concern about Police Violence, and Crime in U.S. Cities, 2014–2016
Between 2014 and 2016, the rate of homicide and other violent crime in the United States rose. One hypothesis discussed in the press and by some social scientists is that this increase was tied to political mobilization against police violence: As the Black Lives Matter movement gained support following protests in Ferguson, Missouri, perhaps police officers, worried about the new public mood, scaled back their law enforcement efforts, with crime…
Liberals and Conservatives in Academia
Princeton University, 1961–1965
In light of the fact that the value of his Yale education had effectively diminished in an increasingly analytic disciplinary marketplace, Richard Rorty—though attracted to Yale University's pluralism—may have been of the opinion that the job was a step down from his current one, that the prospects for tenure at Yale were even slimmer than they were at Princeton University, and that John Smith, with his dismissive reference to au courant movement…
Conclusion
From the earliest days of the pragmatist revival, Richard Rorty occupied an ambiguous position in the community of scholars interested in pragmatism. The fame he won for himself with Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature and Consequences of Pragmatism he gave back to pragmatism a hundredfold—to John Dewey in particular—always insisting that his own philosophy was merely a restatement in more contemporary philosophical terms of Dewey's own. On the o…
The Hutchins College
Robert Maynard Hutchins developed a plan not only to establish a classical curriculum at the University of Chicago but also to transform the philosophy department there so as to lessen pragmatism's influence in the institution. This chapter examines the change Hutchins was able to make in the composition of the philosophy faculty and the curricular changes he instituted at the University of Chicago. Within a decade students would be able to enter…
The Theory of Intellectual Self-Concept
What is true of Richard Rorty is true of all other intellectuals: they are persons no less impinged upon by social mechanisms and processes than any other. This chapter outlines the major theoretical frameworks currently available to sociologists of ideas—those of Pierre Bourdieu and Randall Collins. Without questioning that the theories they have developed offer explanatory purchase over a range of intellectual phenomena, the chapter suggests th…
Winifred Raushenbush
Early investigations of Walter Rauschenbusch and the social gospel movement tended to emphasize the movement's roots among upper-middle-class Protestant elites in the Northeast. More recent inquiries have “studied the social gospel as the religion of the working class in America.” Whichever perspective is correct, historians can at least agree that at the core of the movement was the belief that the institutions of American society should be Chri…
Why Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care?
Neil Gross shows that the U.S. academy’s liberal reputation has exerted a self-selecting influence on young liberals, while deterring promising conservatives. His study sheds new light on both academic life and American politics, where the conservative movement was built in part around opposition to the “liberal elite” in higher education.
The Mechanistas
Why are professors liberal
Social Knowledge in the Making
Over the past quarter century, researchers have successfully explored the inner workings of the physical and biological sciences using a variety of social and historical lenses. Inspired by these advances, the contributors to Social Knowledge in the Making turn their attention to the social sciences, broadly construed. The result is the first comprehensive effort to study and understand the day-to-day activities involved in the creation of social…
The Geometer as Sociologist
publication of a new collection of essays by Georg Simmel, Kurt H. Wolff wrote an essay comparing the two thinkers and their influence. One of their major similarities, in Wolff's view, was that both had philoso phical as well as sociological ambitions. Yet in 1958?and still, by some accounts, in 1976, when Donald Levine and colleagues published Part I of their seminal article, Influence on American Sociology?Simmel remained for many U.S. sociolo…
The Contemporary American Conservative Movement
The American conservative movement that began to gain steam in the post-World War II era had, by the 1980s, emerged as a transformative political force in the United States and the world. Yet sociology has been slower than other disciplines to come to grips with conservatism. In the hope of spurring more research, we review the substantial literature on the conservative movement produced by historians, political scientists, and serious journalist…
Charles Tilly and American Pragmatism
Afterword to the Special Issue on Knowledge in Practice
The Methodology of the Physical Sciences
To find the laws that govern phenomena, we must begin with observation, the simple ascertaining of facts as they are. Before explaining a phenomenon, we must understand it precisely, and this is the goal of observation
On False Certainty or Error
When we know the truth, we're sure of it. But sometimes we have the same degree of certainty even when in error. So error is simply false certainty – certainty with no foundation in reality. A theory of error, therefore, should be included in our discussion of certainty
Faculties of Conception. On the Association of Ideas
The association of ideas is the faculty that connects our ideas to one another. Nothing in the world is isolated, and so it is with our ideas. But this isn't to say that the association of ideas ever acts by chance. There's always a reason why two ideas seem to call out for one another. Here people often mention a story told by Hobbes. In the midst of a conversation about Charles I, someone asks about the value of the Roman denier under Tiberius
On Moral Responsibility
Each of the arguments we're going to advance in the field of ethics rests on the single fact of moral responsibility. The entirety of ethics can thus be revealed by explaining moral responsibility and examining its conditions. The main condition we'll consider is the moral law and its consequences
Consciousness. On the Nature of the Self
We know that the self exists. But what is its nature? Here again, we run across a theory that we've already examined from another perspective. We want to ask if, as some philosophers claim, there's something in us besides the self, something distinct from the body – if somehow the inner world transcends that revealed to us by consciousness – if, in short, the soul is greater than the self
Summary of Ethics
The great philosophers have tended to rely on one of two mutually exclusive approaches to the study of ethics – the first entirely empirical, the second entirely a priori. Epicurus, Mill, and Spencer took an empirical approach, while Kant took an a priori approach. The first begins with observation and proceeds by way of generalization and induction, reaching the pinnacle of its development with Mill. It consists in observing man, either when he'…
General Duties of Social Life. (2) Charity
The moral law requires more of us than that we not treat others as means; in addition, the personality of the other must be treated as an end. So beyond the negative duties of justice, there are the positive duties of charity. We can't remain content simply to avoid undermining the other's personality but should do everything possible to help him realize and develop it. To the formula of the moral law that sums up justice in the phrase “Don't do …
Language
Each man is enclosed within himself. None of us, as Leibniz said of the monad, has windows onto the rest of the world. So how do we communicate with one another? By means of external phenomena called signs
A Pragmatist Theory of Social Mechanisms
Some sociologists have recently argued that a major aim of sociological inquiry is to identify the mechanisms by which cause and effect relationships in the social world come about. This article argues that existing accounts of social mechanisms are problematic because they rest on either inadequately developed or questionable understandings of social action. Building on an insight increasingly common among sociological theorists-that action shou…
Social Knowledge in the Making
Over the past quarter century, researchers have successfully explored the inner workings of the physical and biological sciences using a variety of social and historical lenses. Inspired by these advances, the contributors to Social Knowledge in the Making turn their attention to the social sciences, broadly construed. The result is the first comprehensive effort to study and understand the day-to-day activities involved in the creation of social…
A General Theory of Scientific/Intellectual Movements
The histories of all modern scientific and intellectual fields are marked by dynamism. Yet, despite a welter of case study data, sociologists of ideas have been slow to develop general theories for explaining why and how disciplines, subfields, theory groups, bandwagons, actor networks, and other kindred formations arise to alter the intellectual landscape. To fill this lacuna, this article presents a general theory of scientific/intellectual mov…
The Detraditionalization of Intimacy Reconsidered
This essay challenges those strains of contemporary social theory that regard romantic/ sexual intimacy as a premier site of detraditionalization in the late modern era. Striking changes have occurred in intimacy and family life over the last half-century, but the notion of detraditionalization as currently formulated does not capture them very well. With the goal of achieving a more refined understanding, the article proposes a distinction betwe…
The Contemporary American Conservative Movement
The American conservative movement that began to gain steam in the post-World War II era had, by the 1980s, emerged as a transformative political force in the United States and the world. Yet sociology has been slower than other disciplines to come to grips with conservatism. In the hope of spurring more research, we review the substantial literature on the conservative movement produced by historians, political scientists, and serious journalist…
Becoming a Pragmatist Philosopher
What social factors influence intellectuals' decisions to affiliate with one intellectual tradition over another? In recent years, many sociologists of ideas have viewed intellectual choice as based on the quest for status within the intellectual field. However, the " self-narratives " that thinkers construct to understand who they are as intellectuals are not usually reducible to considerations of status, and the desire to do work resonant with …
Why are professors liberal
The Religiosity of American College and University Professors
For more than a century most U.S. colleges and universities have functioned as secular institutions. But how religious are American college and university faculty in their personal lives? We answer this question by analyzing data from a new, nationally representative survey of the American professoriate. Contrary to the view that religious skepticism predominates in the academy, we find that the majority of professors, even at elite research inst…
Richard Rorty
On his death in 2007, Richard Rorty was heralded by the New York Times as of the world's most influential contemporary thinkers. Controversial on the left and the right for his critiques of objectivity and political radicalism, Rorty experienced a renown denied to all but a handful of living philosophers. In this masterly biography, Neil Gross explores the path of Rorty's thought over the decades in order to trace the intellectual and professiona…
Contemporary Developments in Sociological Theory
This paper characterizes the field of sociological theory since the mid-1980s as the site of eight active and diverse intellectual projects. These projects are (I) to construct general analytical tools for use in empirical social research, (II) to synthesize multiple theoretical approaches; (III) to refine existing theoretical research programs; (IV) to stimulate dialogue among different theoretical perspectives; (V) to enlarge and reconstruct cu…
Charles Tilly and American Pragmatism
Intimacy as a Double-Edged Phenomenon? An Empirical Test of Giddens
In a series of books published since 1990, Anthony Giddens has explored the impact of globalization on the personal relationships and inner lives of those living in the advanced capitalist societies of the West. Of particular interest to him have been intimate, sexual relationships, which he views as tending, under the weight of globalization, away from a “traditional” model and toward a “posttraditional” form in which the relationship is seen as…
Pragmatism and the study of large-scale social phenomena
The Structure of Causal Chains
Sociologists are increasingly attentive to the mechanisms responsible for cause-and-effect relationships in the social world. But an aspect of mechanistic causality has not been sufficiently considered. It is well recognized that most phenomena of interest to social science result from multiple mechanisms operating in sequence. However, causal chains-sequentially linked mechanisms and their enabling background conditions-vary not just substantive…
Durkheim's Pragmatism Lectures
This article attempts to understand Émile Durkheim's 1913-14 lectures on pragmatism and sociology by situating them in the socio-intellectual context of the time. An analysis of books and journal articles from the period reveals that the ideas of the Anglo-American pragmatic philosophers Charles Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and F.C.S. Schiller were very popular in pre-World War I France. The French term le pragmatisme, however, was used to …
Richard Rorty's pragmatism
Alvin Gouldner and the Sociology of Ideas
Alvin Gouldner's 1965 book Enter Plato is one of the most important contributions ever made to the sociology of ideas. Overshadowed soon after its publication, however, by Gouldner's more controversial work, The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology, the earlier book has suffered neglect. In an effort to correct this situation, we situate Enter Plato against the backdrop of other mid-twentieth-century works in the sociology of knowledge and related …
The Mechanistas
Afterword to the Special Issue on Knowledge in Practice
A note on the sociological eye and the discovery of a new Durkheim text
The text consisting of recently discovered student notes taken during Émile Durkheim's 1883–1884 lycée lectures on philosophy bears few signs of the social realist perspective with which Durkheim's later work has been identified. Though some scholars have argued that Durkheim's thought was sociological almost from the start, the lectures suggest that Durkheim's sociological eye did not develop until well after the completion of his schooling at t…
Durkheim's Pragmatism Lectures
This article attempts to understand Émile Durkheim's 1913-14 lectures on pragmatism and sociology by situating them in the socio-intellectual context of the time. An analysis of books and journal articles from the period reveals that the ideas of the Anglo-American pragmatic philosophers Charles Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and F.C.S. Schiller were very popular in pre-World War I France. The French term le pragmatisme, however, was used to …
Contemporary Developments in Sociological Theory
This paper characterizes the field of sociological theory since the mid-1980s as the site of eight active and diverse intellectual projects. These projects are (I) to construct general analytical tools for use in empirical social research, (II) to synthesize multiple theoretical approaches; (III) to refine existing theoretical research programs; (IV) to stimulate dialogue among different theoretical perspectives; (V) to enlarge and reconstruct cu…
On Durkheim's Elementary Forms of Religious Life
The Cosmopolitan Self
Becoming a Pragmatist Philosopher
What social factors influence intellectuals' decisions to affiliate with one intellectual tradition over another? In recent years, many sociologists of ideas have viewed intellectual choice as based on the quest for status within the intellectual field. However, the " self-narratives " that thinkers construct to understand who they are as intellectuals are not usually reducible to considerations of status, and the desire to do work resonant with …
Intimacy as a Double-Edged Phenomenon? An Empirical Test of Giddens
In a series of books published since 1990, Anthony Giddens has explored the impact of globalization on the personal relationships and inner lives of those living in the advanced capitalist societies of the West. Of particular interest to him have been intimate, sexual relationships, which he views as tending, under the weight of globalization, away from a “traditional” model and toward a “posttraditional” form in which the relationship is seen as…
Alvin Gouldner and the Sociology of Ideas
Alvin Gouldner's 1965 book Enter Plato is one of the most important contributions ever made to the sociology of ideas. Overshadowed soon after its publication, however, by Gouldner's more controversial work, The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology, the earlier book has suffered neglect. In an effort to correct this situation, we situate Enter Plato against the backdrop of other mid-twentieth-century works in the sociology of knowledge and related …
Richard Rorty's pragmatism
Durkheim's Philosophy Lectures
Moving back and forth between the history of philosophy and the contributions of philosophers in his own day, Durkheim takes up topics as diverse as philosophical psychology, logic, ethics, and metaphysics, and seeks to articulate a unified philosophical position. Remarkably, in these lectures, given more than a decade before the publication of his groundbreaking book, The Division of Labour in Society (1893), the 'social realism' that is so char…
A General Theory of Scientific/Intellectual Movements
The histories of all modern scientific and intellectual fields are marked by dynamism. Yet, despite a welter of case study data, sociologists of ideas have been slow to develop general theories for explaining why and how disciplines, subfields, theory groups, bandwagons, actor networks, and other kindred formations arise to alter the intellectual landscape. To fill this lacuna, this article presents a general theory of scientific/intellectual mov…
The Detraditionalization of Intimacy Reconsidered
This essay challenges those strains of contemporary social theory that regard romantic/ sexual intimacy as a premier site of detraditionalization in the late modern era. Striking changes have occurred in intimacy and family life over the last half-century, but the notion of detraditionalization as currently formulated does not capture them very well. With the goal of achieving a more refined understanding, the article proposes a distinction betwe…
Comment on Searle
While appreciative of Searle's contributions, this commentary questions whether the core insights of The Construction of Social Reality advance all that much beyond the position staked out more than a century ago by Emile Durkheim. Durkheim, to be sure, was no analytic philosopher, but both Durkheim and Searle recognize the existence of something like collective representations, view a key feature of such representations as being that of imposing…
Richard Rorty
Richard Rorty
Richard Rorty
On his death in 2007, Richard Rorty was heralded by the New York Times as of the world's most influential contemporary thinkers. Controversial on the left and the right for his critiques of objectivity and political radicalism, Rorty experienced a renown denied to all but a handful of living philosophers. In this masterly biography, Neil Gross explores the path of Rorty's thought over the decades in order to trace the intellectual and professiona…
The Methodology of the Physical Sciences
To find the laws that govern phenomena, we must begin with observation, the simple ascertaining of facts as they are. Before explaining a phenomenon, we must understand it precisely, and this is the goal of observation
On False Certainty or Error
When we know the truth, we're sure of it. But sometimes we have the same degree of certainty even when in error. So error is simply false certainty – certainty with no foundation in reality. A theory of error, therefore, should be included in our discussion of certainty
Faculties of Conception. On the Association of Ideas
The association of ideas is the faculty that connects our ideas to one another. Nothing in the world is isolated, and so it is with our ideas. But this isn't to say that the association of ideas ever acts by chance. There's always a reason why two ideas seem to call out for one another. Here people often mention a story told by Hobbes. In the midst of a conversation about Charles I, someone asks about the value of the Roman denier under Tiberius
On Moral Responsibility
Each of the arguments we're going to advance in the field of ethics rests on the single fact of moral responsibility. The entirety of ethics can thus be revealed by explaining moral responsibility and examining its conditions. The main condition we'll consider is the moral law and its consequences
Consciousness. On the Nature of the Self
We know that the self exists. But what is its nature? Here again, we run across a theory that we've already examined from another perspective. We want to ask if, as some philosophers claim, there's something in us besides the self, something distinct from the body – if somehow the inner world transcends that revealed to us by consciousness – if, in short, the soul is greater than the self
Summary of Ethics
The great philosophers have tended to rely on one of two mutually exclusive approaches to the study of ethics – the first entirely empirical, the second entirely a priori. Epicurus, Mill, and Spencer took an empirical approach, while Kant took an a priori approach. The first begins with observation and proceeds by way of generalization and induction, reaching the pinnacle of its development with Mill. It consists in observing man, either when he'…
General Duties of Social Life. (2) Charity
The moral law requires more of us than that we not treat others as means; in addition, the personality of the other must be treated as an end. So beyond the negative duties of justice, there are the positive duties of charity. We can't remain content simply to avoid undermining the other's personality but should do everything possible to help him realize and develop it. To the formula of the moral law that sums up justice in the phrase “Don't do …
Language
Each man is enclosed within himself. None of us, as Leibniz said of the monad, has windows onto the rest of the world. So how do we communicate with one another? By means of external phenomena called signs
Reason. On the Objectivity of Rational Principles
Earlier, when we discussed the nature of the external world, we didn't have the necessary foundation to ask if rational principles express the laws of this world in the same way that they express the laws of the mind. Now we'll try to solve this problem. By necessity, the mind sees all things under the form of rational judgments. But are things themselves also subject to such judgments? Do the laws of the mind have objective value? We'll examine …
Philosophy (93 works) · Epistemology (80 works) · Psychology (47 works) · Sociology (44 works) · Computer Science (32 works) · Political science (28 works) · Law (26 works) · Mathematics (19 works) · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice (16 works) · Linguistics (16 works)