Social Science

Adam Smith and Modern Sociology A Study in the Methodology of the Social Sciences

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This book is a fragment which I hope will some time find its place in a more complete study of the relations between nineteenth-century social sciences and sociology. The larger investigation is in progress in my seminar, and results are already in sight which justify belief that the work will not be without value. On the purely methodological side, this investigation was stimulated, if not originally suggested, by experiences in connection with the St. Louis Congress of Arts and Science. In all departments of progressive knowledge, the second half of the nineteenth century was unique in its intensive development of scientific analysis. It is not probable that scholars will ever permanently appraise the importance of analysis below their present estimates, but it is certain that we are entering an era of relatively higher appreciation of synthesis. The most distinctive trait of present scholarship is its striving for correlation with all other scholarship. Segregated sciences are becoming discredited sciences. The sociologists are aware that sterility must be the fate of every celibate social science. Cross fertilization of the social sciences occurs in spite of the most obstinate programs of non-intercourse. Commerce of the social sciences with one another should be deliberate, and it should make the policy of isolation disreputable. An objective science of economics without an objective sociology is as impossible as grammar without language. The present essay attempts to enforce this axiom by using Adam Smith as a concrete illustration.

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Publisher

: ., 2001

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1-107

Language

English

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NONE

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Adam Smith and Modern Sociology A Study in the Met

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