Philosophical Foundations of the Three Sociologies

Bibliographic Data

ID5635440
AuthorsMark T Mitchell, Mark Mitchell (0000-0003-4494-8840)
Year1978
Volume29
Issue3
Pages379
Publication date1978-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeREVIEW
Review ofPhilosophical Foundations of the Three Sociologies (Rle Social Theory), Ted Benton, 2014
VenueBritish Journal of Sociology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0007-1315 • E-ISSN: 1468-4446
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/590110
OpenAlexW2020678388
LanguageEN
Citations received1

An extended historical and philosophical argument, this book will be a valuable text for all students of the philosophy of the social sciences. It discusses the serious alternatives to positivist and empiricist accounts of the physical sciences, and poses the debate between naturalism and anti-naturalism in the social sciences in new terms. Recent materialist and realist philosophies of science make possible a defence of naturalism which does not make concessions to positivism and which recognizes the force of several of the anti-positivist arguments from the main anti-naturalist (neo-Kantian) tradition. The author presents a critical evaluation of empiricist and positivist theories of knowledge, and investigates some classic attempts at using them to provide the philosophical foundation for a scientific sociology. He takes the Kantian critique of empiricism as the starting point for the main anti-positivist and anti-naturalist philosophical approaches to the social studies. He goes on to investigate the inadequacy of post-Kantian arguments from Rickert, Weber, Winch and others, both against non-positivist forms of naturalism and as the possible source of a distinctive philosophical foundation for the social studies. The book concludes with a critical investigation of the Marxian tradition and an attempt to establish the possibility of a materialist and realist defence of the project of a natural science of history, which escapes the fundamental flaws of both positivist and neo-Kantian attempts at philosophical foundation

Epistemology · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Philosophy · Political Science Research and Education · Weber, Simmel, Sociological Theory

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