Social Science History. Six essays for budding theorists home
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by Andrew Roberts  

Originally published in 1997 by All Saints Bookshop, Enfield Campus, Middlesex University. Enfield Campus and the bookshop are now closed. The book is now free, in various formats, from this website.

Essays that argue the importance of imagination for science and show the consequences of social science on our everyday lives. From the imagination of 17th century pioneers to the imagination of modern theorists, and from the ideas of Aristotle on women and slavery to those of the French revolutionaries, the essays show how sociology, psychology, economics and other social sciences are rooted in our common culture.

Plus a section of extracts from Aristotle, Filmer, Locke, Rousseau, Adam Smith, Wollstonecraft, Olympe de Gouges, Weber and Durkheim - plus others added since.

Chapters as web pages with links to sources Chapters for printing

1. EMPIRICISM, THEORY AND THE IMAGINATION
John Stuart Mill and his problems with Francis Bacon

2. HOBBES, FILMER AND LOCKE
17th Century Models for a Science of Society

3. WHAT IS SCIENCE?
The Ideas of Locke, Hume and Wollstonecraft:

4. CAN THEORY REDESIGN SOCIETY?
Rousseau, the French Revolution, Women and Slaves:

5. SOCIAL SCIENCE AND THE 1834 POOR LAW
The Theories that Smith, Bentham, Malthus and Owen made:

6. DURKHEIM AND WEBER'S CONTRASTING IMAGINATIONS
Who is the Sociologist?


SCIENCE AND SOCIETY BOOKLIST

CHRONOLOGY: SOCIAL SCIENCE HISTORY TIMELINE

Index to names, concepts and theories provided in the printed book (now out of print)

IN THEIR OWN WORDS
Plato
Aristotle on the state, slavery and women
Robert Filmer on the rule of fathers
Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan
John Locke's on constitutional Government
Freedom and Slavery in Rousseau's Social Contract
Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations
Declaration of the Rights of Man 1789
Declaration of the Rights of Woman by Olympe de Gouges 1791
Mary Wollstonecraft on the rights and duties of men and women
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels - The Communist Manifesto
Max Weber
Emile Durkheim
Sigmund Freud
George Herbert Mead
Talcott Parsons
Erich Fromm
Herbert Marcuse
Simone De Beauvoir
Robert Merton
Erving Goffman
Michel Foucault
Julie Ford
Frank Pearce







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