Social Science under Debate

Mario Bunge, author of the monumental Treatise on Basic Philosophy, is widely renowned as a philosopher of science. In this new and ambitious work he shifts his attention to the social sciences and the social technologies. He considers a number of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, economics, political science, law, history, and management science.

Bunge contends that social science research has fallen prey to a postmodern fascination with irrationalism and relativism. He urges social scientists to re-examine the philosophy and the methodology at the base of their discipline. Bunge calls for objective and relevant fact-finding, rigorous theorizing, and empirical testing, as well as morally sensitive and socially responsible policy design.

Bunge contends that social science research has fallen prey to a postmodern fascination with irrationalism and relativism. He urges social scientists to re-examine the philosophy and the methodology at the base of their discipline.

• Imprint: University of Toronto Press
• Published: November 1999
• Pages: 672

• pdf: 9781442680036
• paperback: 9780802083579
• hardcover: 9780802042989

Mario Bunge is the Frothingham Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the Department of Philosophy at McGill University.

‘We should welcome the book for its author, subject, and style. He maps what is wrong and what is strong in energetic, opinionated prose. I can't wait to teach from the published version, not to mention embellish my own methodological essays with bright quotations from it.’

Charles Tilly, Columbia University

‘This book covers a vast domain with a firm grasp of the big issues. Its great advantage lies in treating all this material from a unified perspective.’

Nicholas Rescher, Pittsburgh University

‘The book is scholarly yet lively; comprehensive yet unified around a few central powerful ideas; profound yet entertaining reading with one bon mot after another; unorthodox yet constructive; a sort of vademecum for the bewitched but critical rover through the manifold of contemporary social studies.’

Joseph Agassi, Tel Aviv and York Universities

‘The main merit of this work is a wide range of relevant material, reliably and intelligently assembled, clearly presented. No one can read this volume without learning a great deal, and it could be used as a backbone of a teaching course, or an intelligent person could use it in an initiation to each of the fields. Clarity, erudition and range are the merits.’

The late Ernest A. Gellner, Central European University