Positivism and Sociology (RLE Social Theory) (Record no. 2370)

MARC details
000 -LEADER
fixed length control field 02267 a2200241 4500
001 - CONTROL NUMBER
control field 1138995169
005 - DATE AND TIME OF LATEST TRANSACTION
control field 20250317100411.0
008 - FIXED-LENGTH DATA ELEMENTS--GENERAL INFORMATION
fixed length control field 250312042016GB eng
020 ## - INTERNATIONAL STANDARD BOOK NUMBER
International Standard Book Number 9781138995161
037 ## - SOURCE OF ACQUISITION
Source of stock number/acquisition Taylor & Francis
Terms of availability GBP 45.99
Form of issue BB
040 ## - CATALOGING SOURCE
Original cataloging agency 01
041 ## - LANGUAGE CODE
Language code of text/sound track or separate title eng
072 7# - SUBJECT CATEGORY CODE
Subject category code JHBA
Source thema
072 7# - SUBJECT CATEGORY CODE
Subject category code JHBA
Source bic
072 7# - SUBJECT CATEGORY CODE
Subject category code SOC026000
Source bisac
072 7# - SUBJECT CATEGORY CODE
Subject category code 301
Source bisac
100 1# - MAIN ENTRY--PERSONAL NAME
Personal name Peter Halfpenny
245 10 - TITLE STATEMENT
Title Positivism and Sociology (RLE Social Theory)
Remainder of title Explaining Social Life
250 ## - EDITION STATEMENT
Edition statement 1
260 ## - PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC.
Place of publication, distribution, etc. Oxford
Name of publisher, distributor, etc. Routledge
Date of publication, distribution, etc. 20160121
300 ## - PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
Extent 138 p
520 ## - SUMMARY, ETC.
Expansion of summary note Any serious attempt to explain social life has to come to terms with sociology's positivist legacy. It is a heritage on the one hand from the seventeenth-century political arithmeticians and the later moral statisticians who believed that quantification would provide the basis for a dispassionate analysis of social affairs; and on the other hand from the nineteenth-century post-Enlightenment social philosophers who were eager to develop an empirical science of society that would enable them to control social conduct – just as the physical sciences had provided the knowledge to tame nature. Yet every debate about the relation between positivism and sociology is clouded by the diversity of uses of the term 'positivism' – uses that are so varied that some can pronounce positivism dead while others find it still the vital force that dominates sociology. The particular merit of Peter Halfpenny's book is that it makes this diversity of uses its central theme. In order to provide a clear basis from which to assess controversial questions about the contribution of the positivist traditions to sociology, the book reviews twelve different important uses of the term 'positivism' that have emerged at different times since the mid-nineteenth century, when Auguste Comte coined both 'positivism' and 'sociology'. This review is conducted by examining the historical development of the two independent roots of modern sociological positivism – positivist philosophy and statistics – and by analysing logical positivist philosophy, which in many ways defined the course of twentieth century philosophy of the social (as well as the natural) sciences.

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