Dlittle30

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I am a philosopher of social science with a strong interest in China and Southeast Asia. Paying attention to the logical and conceptual issues raised by the social sciences is key to better understanding the modern world. I think philosophers need to interact seriously and extensively with working social scientists and historians if they are going to be able to make a useful contribution.


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LATEST ARTICLES ( 885 )

  • Cacophony of the Social

    Cacophony Social

    Take a typical day in a major city -- a busy street with a subway stop, a park, a coffee bar, and a large consumer financial office. There are several thousand... Read more

    Posted on 16 June 2017 SOCIETY

  • Organizational Learning

    Organizational Learning

    I've posed the question of organizational learning several times in recent months: are there forces that push organizations towards changes leading to... Read more

    Posted on 13 June 2017 SOCIETY

  • Social Change and Leadership

    Social Change Leadership

    Historians pay a lot of attention to important periods of social change -- the emergence of new political movements, the development of a great city, the end... Read more

    Posted on 01 June 2017 SOCIETY

  • Proliferation of Hate and Intolerance

    Proliferation Hate Intolerance

    Paul Brass provides a wealth of ethnographic and historical evidence on the causes of Hindu-Muslim violence in India in The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence... Read more

    Posted on 27 May 2017 SOCIETY

  • Democracy and the Politics of Intolerance

    Democracy Politics Intolerance

    A democracy allows government to reflect the will of the people. Or does it? Here I would like to understand a bit better the dynamics through which radical... Read more

    Posted on 24 May 2017 SOCIETY

  • Is There a New Capitalism?

    There Capitalism?

    An earlier post considered Dave Elder-Vass’s very interesting treatment of the contemporary digital economy. In Profit and Gift in the Digital Economy Elder-Vas... Read more

    Posted on 20 May 2017 SOCIETY

  • Brian Epstein's Radical Metaphysics

    Brian Epstein's Radical Metaphysics

    Brian Epstein is adamant that the social sciences need to think very differently about the nature of the social world. In The Ant Trap: Rebuilding the... Read more

    Posted on 12 May 2017 SOCIETY

  • Generativism

    Generativism

    There is a seductive appeal to the idea of a "generative social science". Joshua Epstein is one of the main proponents of the idea, most especially in his... Read more

    Posted on 09 May 2017 SOCIETY

  • Snippets from the Roman World

    Snippets from Roman World

    image: Arch of Septimius Severus, Forum (203 CE)The history of Rome has a particular fascination for twenty-first century readers, especially in the West. Read more

    Posted on 05 May 2017 CULTURE

  • Strategies for Resisting Right-wing Populism

    Strategies Resisting Right-wing Populism

    Social Europe is a vibrant publisher of current progressive thought in Europe. Readers can find data, opinion, and policy analysis on the site, highly relevant... Read more

    Posted on 29 April 2017 SOCIETY

  • Perspectives on Transportation History

    Perspectives Transportation History

    I view transport as a crucial structuring condition in society that is perhaps under-appreciated and under-studied. The extension of the Red Line from Harvard... Read more

    Posted on 27 April 2017 SOCIETY

  • New Understandings of Populism

    Understandings Populism

    It is apparent, on this first round of the presidential elections in France, that we urgently need to understand better the dynamics and causes of radical... Read more

    Posted on 24 April 2017 SOCIETY

  • Complexity and Contingency

    One of the more intriguing currents of social science research today is the field of complexity theory. Scientists like John Holland (Complexity: A Very Short... Read more

    Posted on 22 April 2017 SOCIETY

  • Observation, Measurement, and Explanation

    Observation, Measurement, Explanation

    An earlier post reiterated my reasons for doubting that the social sciences can in principle give rise to general theories that serve to organize and predict th... Read more

    Posted on 02 April 2017 SOCIETY

  • Science Policy and the Cold War

    Science Policy Cold

    The marriage of science, technology, and national security took a major step forward during and following World War II. The secret Manhattan project,... Read more

    Posted on 31 March 2017 SOCIETY

  • Social Science Or Social Studies?

    Social Science Studies?

    A genuinely difficult question is this: does the idea of a rigorous "social science" really make sense, given what we know of the nature of the social world, th... Read more

    Posted on 30 March 2017 SOCIETY

  • The Soft Side of Critical Realism

    Soft Side Critical Realism

    Critical realism has appealed to a range of sociologists and political scientists, in part because of the legitimacy it renders for the study of social... Read more

    Posted on 21 March 2017 SOCIETY

  • Mechanisms According to Analytical Sociology

    Mechanisms According Analytical Sociology

    One of the distinguishing characteristics of analytical sociology is its insistence on the idea of causal mechanisms as the core component of explanation. Read more

    Posted on 17 March 2017 SOCIETY

  • Moral Limits on War

    Moral Limits

    World War II raised great issues of morality in the conduct of war. These were practical issues during the war, because that conflict approached "total war" --... Read more

    Posted on 09 March 2017 SOCIETY

  • The Atomic Bomb

    Atomic Bomb

    Richard Rhodes' history of the development of the atomic bomb, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, is now thirty years old. The book is crucial reading for anyone wh... Read more

    Posted on 04 March 2017 SOCIETY