Inventing human science

Inventing Human Science: Eighteenth Century Domains. Edited by Christopher Fox, Roy Porter, and Robert Wokler (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995) $45.00 and £24.00 cloth, xv + 357 pp.     

Teaching social science models

Ralph L. Beals. The Peasant Marketing System of Oaxaca, Mexico. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975. ix + 419 pp. Illustrations, maps, figures, appendices, bibliography, and index. $20.00.

Scott Cook and Martin Diskin, eds. Markets in Oaxaca, Mexico. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976. 285 pp. Illustrations, maps, tables, glossary, bibliography, and index. $9.95.     

A self conscious science

Schweder, Richard, and Robert LeVine, eds. Culture Theory: Essays on Mind, Self, and Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. viii + 359 pp. including name and subject indices. $42.50 cloth.     

Trends in political science

Ithiel de Sola Pool, ed.: Contemporary Political Science: Toward Empirical Theory, McGraw‐Hill, New York, 1967, pp. 276, $7.90.     

Earth science and archaeology

Rapp, George, Jr., and John A. Gifford. eds. Archaeological Geology. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985. xvii + 435 pp. including figures, chapter references, appendix, and index. $35.00 cloth.

Stein, Julie K., and William R. Farrand, eds. Archaeological Sediments in Context. Orono: University of Maine, Center for the Study of Early Man, Peopling of the Americas Edited Volume Series 1, 1985. xi + 147 pp. including figures, chapter references, and index. $19.00 paper.     

Islamology,political science and history

ARABIC THOUGHT IN THE LIBERAL AGE 1798–1939. Albert Hourani. O.U.P., 1962.

THE INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS OF EGYPTIAN NATIONALISM, J. M. Ahmed. O.U.P., 1960.

AHMADIYYAH (A Study in Contemporary Islam on the West African Coast). Humphrey J. Fisher. O.U.P., 1963.     

In the cause of science

Jane C. Steward and Robert F. Murphy, eds. Evolution and Ecology: Essays in Social Transformation by Julian H. Steward. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977. ix +406 pp. Maps, figures, references, biographical notes. $12.95.     

Hard rocks and heavy science

Earl Swanson, ed. Lithic Technology: Making and Using Stone Tools. The Hague and Paris: Mouton Publishers, 1975. Distributed in North America by Aldine Publishing Company, vii + 251 pp. Illustrations, tables, figures, biographical notes, and indices. $27.50.     

Proxemics: A complex science

Edward T. Hall. Handbook for Proxemic Research. Washington, D. C: Society for the Anthropology of Visual Communication, 1974. 124 pp. Figures, appendices, and references. $5.00 (paper).     

Political science and the study of politics in New Zealand

Stephen Levine (Ed.), Politics in New Zealand: A Reader, Allen and Unwin, 1978.

Alan McRobie and Nigel S. Roberts, Election ‘78. The 1977 Electoral Redistribution and the 1978 General Election in New Zealand, John McIndoe, 1978.     

Advocacy and the struggle for a better science of anthropology

Spaulding, Philip, ed. Anthropology in Praxis. Calgary, Canada: Department of Anthropology, Occasional Papers in Anthropology and Primatology, 1986. iii + 253 pp. N. P.

Paine, Robert, ed. Advocacy and Anthropology, First Encounters. St. Johns, Newfoundland, Canada: Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1985. xiii 4‐ 278 pp. including references. $15.00 paper.

Agar, Michael H. Independents Declared: The Dilemmas of Independent Trucking. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1986. 191 pp. including appendices, literature cited, and index. $24.95 cloth, $14.95 paper.     

Toward a new humanism in social science

Maurice Roche. Phenomenology, Language and the Social Sciences. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973. x. + 361 pp. Bibliography and index. $15.50.     

Vico's science of imagination

I argue that despite the various ways in which Fichte separates right from morality in his 1796/97 Foundations of Natural Right, he nevertheless suggests in the writings from the period of his professorship at the University of Jena that there is a reciprocal relation between them. This requires, however, reading the Foundations of Natural Right in the light of The System of Ethics, which was published in 1798, especially the account of the ethical duties deriving from a person's membership of a profession that Fichte gives in this work. Although this approach allows us to attribute to Fichte a different conception of the state to the amoral one found in the Foundations of Natural Right, I argue that the separation of right from morality developed in this work remains valid and amounts to one of Fichte's main achievements, namely, his identification of the different dispositions that may characterize an individual's relation to the society in which he or she lives. This point is developed by comparing Fichte's amoral conception of the state to Hegel's account of civil society as the ‘state of necessity’. This does not involve an attempt to turn Fichte into Hegel but to show how the insights contained in Fichte's distinction between right and morality can be illuminated with reference to Hegel's theory of civil society and can be retained in the face of a powerful criticism that Hegel makes of the kind of contract theory of the state offered by Fichte.     

Rediscovering regional science: Positioning the field's evolving location in science and society

This study aims to provide a comprehensive examination of the evolution of regional science, a scholarly domain in the social sciences that applies analytical and quantitative approaches and methods to understand and address urban, rural, or regional problems. We conducted a bibliometric analysis of 8509 articles published in six regional science flagship journals (including the Journal of Regional Science, Annals of Regional Science, Regional Science and Urban Economics, Papers in Regional Science, Regional Science Policy and Practice, and International Regional Science Review) from 1958 to 2021. The analysis presents an objective data-driven and unprecedented visualization of the field's intellectual, social, and conceptual structure and trends from the beginning to the present. It also provides a rich portrayal of the epistemology of regional science and illuminates matters related to regional science education and training. We find that regional science has moved well beyond its origins, shifting away from a heavy focus on theory and abstraction to modeling/simulation, empirical analysis, and policy research. We also find that there has been increasing attention to “people” in regions and the spatial characteristics of social problems, and some important shifts in the regional science community itself, particularly in terms of patterns of collaboration and the geography of scholarship. The findings of this paper provide implications for future directions of research and education for regional science.     

Political science,the state and Marx

Nicos Poulantzas, Political Power and Social Classes (translated by Timothy O'Hagan), New Left Books & Sheed and Ward, London, 1973, pp. 367, $15.25.     

The history and philosophy of social science

Carlo Ginzburg is best known as the author of a popular and widely commented work of microstoria Il formaggio e i vermi, published in 1976. Rather than focusing on Ginzburg's contributions to the genre of microstoria, or on the development of his long and very productive scholarly career, my aim in this article is to reflect on a set of themes that recur, with impressive persistence, in his work, from his earliest publications in the mid-1960s, to his most recent works. Above all, I suggest that two elements recur in his work, and that these, jointly, impart upon it its defining character. They are the concern with epistemological issues of knowing, and the ethical conception of the historian's work, which Ginzburg expressess and defends with urelenting rigour.     

Towards a trickster science/fiction: complexifying boundaries with Neal Stephenson and Michel Serres

ABSTRACT

This article highlights an intersection between the science fiction of Neal Stephenson and the science philosophy of Michel Serres. As two of the most prolific contemporary advocates of the communication between literature and science, Serres and Stephenson employ permutations of the trickster figure as a potent lens on the epistemological transformations that occur when boundaries are crossed and static systems perturbed. Allegorizing the birth of science and rational consciousness as the intervention of a trickster, Stephenson finds in hackers and couriers the same generative force that Serres associates with the Greek god Hermes and the figure of the parasite. With particular attention to Stephenson’s postcyberpunk novel Snow Crash (Stephenson, Neal. 1992. Snow Crash. London: Penguin Books) and Serres’ Hermes series (1969–1980), the concept of the trickster will be explored as both a personification of the kinship between creation mythologies, information theory, anthropology, and modern physics, and as the template for a productive transdisciplinary mode of cultural inquiry.     

Composing Einstein: exploring the kinship of art and science

Abstract

The work Albert Einstein published in 1905 led to a revolution in physics and the way nature is explained. At the same time, his physics touches on profound existential questions which are also dwelt upon in the arts. This article addresses the relatedness of music and physics, art and science. The point of departure is my composition The Einstein Resoundings, and how writing it refined my sensitivity to the deeper layers of creative effort. I discuss points of contact between the spheres of music and physics: the phenomenon of quantum leaps, continuous and discontinuous structures in tone and atom, and the role of continuity and discontinuity in the act of creation. My reflection on the kinship of art and science is based on the notion of complementarities. This allows a double perspective on art and science as different in regard to activity and language, but similar in regard to their mutually complementing characters.     

Science and theatre in open dialogue: Biblioetica,Le Cas de Sophie K. and the postdramatic science play

Abstract

Judging by the many new ventures into the genre of the 'science play' over the last few years, the surge of interest in science on stage continues unchecked. The most interesting aspect of this trend, however, is not quantity but variety, and the ways in which directors in particular are beginning to challenge the playwright-driven and biographically inflected engagements that have so far dominated science on stage. In this article we discuss two recent productions from two prominent directors: Luca Ronconi's Biblioetica, staged in Turin in February–March 2006, and Jean-François Peyret's Le Cas de Sophie K., given in Paris in April–May. The gulf between these productions and more theatrically conventional plays like Copenhagen and Arcadia is wide, and this new work represents a significant step for science plays in the direction of 'postdramatic theatre', a term used by Hans-Thies Lehmann in his groundbreaking work on the subject. We argue that for many reasons these productions suggest that the interaction of science and the stage lends itself by its very nature to the postdramatic condition.     

European integration and the social science of EU studies: the disciplinary politics of a subfield

This article takes the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome as an opportunity to reflect upon half a century of academic discourse about the EU and its antecedents. In particular, it illuminates the theoretical analysis of European integration that has developed within political science and international studies broadly defined. It asks whether it is appropriate to map, as might be tempting, the intellectual ‘progress’ of the field of study against the empirical evolution of its object (European integration/the EU). The argument to be presented here is that while we can, to some extent, comprehend the evolution of academic thinking about the EU as a reflex to critical shifts in the ‘real world’ of European integration (‘externalist’ drivers), it is also necessary to understand ‘internalist’ drivers of theoretical discourse on European integration/the EU. The article contemplates two such ‘internalist’ components that have shaped and continue to shape the course of EU studies: scholarly contingency (the fact that scholarship does not proceed with free agency, but is bound by various conditions) and disciplinary politics (the idea that the course of academic work is governed by power games and that there are likely significant disagreements about best practice and progress in a field). In terms of EU studies, the thrust of disciplinary politics tends towards an opposition between ‘mainstreaming’ and ‘pluralist versions’ of the political science of EU studies. The final section explores how, in the face of emerging monistic claims about propriety in the field, an effective pluralist political science of the EU might be enhanced.