The History and Philosophy of Social Science.

• Author: Davis, John B.

This is a rare and masterful book that will doubtless constitute a key resource for many future scholars. Scott Gordon has produced a most erudite survey of the fundamental issues involved in the development of social science, including economics, sociology, history, and political science. His orientation on his subject, he tells us, is "to maintain a strong focus on the flow of theoretical ideas in the history of social science, and to connect that history with issues in the philosophy of the subject". Thus the book does not attempt to comprehensively survey all identifiable contributions to social science, but rather seeks to explain the broad strategies of explanation adopted since the Enlightenment to extend natural science methodologies to the analysis of society. This makes the issue of the differences between natural and social science a central theme of Gordon's book, and one that he treats with considerable skill and perception across a variety of subjects and individuals.

But much more of methodological and philosophical import occupies this history as well. This is most evident in the book's system of organization which alternates chapters relating important historical episodes (e.g., Chapter 5, "Physiocracy: The First Economic Model," Chapter 7, "The Scottish Enlightenment of the Eighteenth Century," Chapter 9, "Classical Political Economy," and Chapter 11, "Utilitarianism") with systematic chapters investigating underlying themes and methodologies (Chapter 6, "The Methodology of Modelling," Chapter 8, "Progress and Perfection," and Chapter 10, "The Idea of Harmonious Order"). The effect of this strategy of organization is to impress upon the student of individual contributions the theoretical contexts in which ideas operate. The book can also be read selectively across its systematic chapters with reference to historical contributions as necessary (one must not overlook, however, systematic sections that fall within the contributions chapters).

For economists of more theoretical orientation the book possesses two related virtues. On the one hand, Gordon shows special interest in economic ideas and considerable sophistication in their explanation (Gordon was trained as an economist). Historians of economic thought will rarely find judgments in his pages to dispute, and indeed the chapters on the history of economic thought in the book are sufficient to constitute a text in themselves. On the other hand, because the book...