000			02267 a2200241 4500
001			1138995169
005			20250317100411.0
008			250312042016GB eng
020			_a9781138995161
037			_bTaylor & Francis _cGBP 45.99 _fBB
040			_a01
041			_aeng
072	7		_aJHBA _2thema
072	7		_aJHBA _2bic
072	7		_aSOC026000 _2bisac
072	7		_a301 _2bisac
100	1		_aPeter Halfpenny
245	1	0	_aPositivism and Sociology (RLE Social Theory) _bExplaining Social Life
250			_a1
260			_aOxford _bRoutledge _c20160121
300			_a138 p
520			_bAny 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.
999			_c2370 _d2370