The Philosophy of Social Science Reader

The Philosophy of Social Science Reader is an outstanding, comprehensive and up-to-date collection of key readings in the philosophy of social science, covering the essential issues, problems and debates in this important interdisciplinary area.

Each section is carefully introduced by the editors, and the readings placed in context. The anthology is organized into seven clear parts:

• Values and Social Science
• Causal Inference and Explanation
• Interpretation
• Rationality and Choice
• Individualism
• Norms
• Cultural Evolution.

Featuring the work of influential philosophers and social scientists such as Ernest Nagel, Ian Hacking, John Searle, Clifford Geertz, Daniel Kahneman, Steven Lukes and Richard Dawkins, The Philosophy of Social Science Reader is the ideal text for philosophy of social science courses, and for students in related disciplines interested in the differences between the social and natural sciences.

Francesco Guala is Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Milan, Italy. He is the author of The Methodology of Experimental Economics (2005), and of many articles published in philosophical and scientific journals. He is currently book review editor of the journal Economics and Philosophy.

Daniel Steel is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Michigan State University, USA. His research on causal inference and explanation in social science and biology has appeared in Philosophy of the Social Sciences, and The British Journal of the Philosophy of Science. He is the author of Across the Boundaries: Extrapolation in Biology and Social Science (2008).