Philosophical foundations of the social sciences : analyzing controversies in social research /

Are the social sciences part of science? In the book under review, Kincaid (philosophy, Univ. of Alabama at Birmingham) criticizes his philosophical colleagues, "who are willing to pronounce entire domains of social inquiry doomed to failure while paying little attention to what social scientists actually do." Philosophers of science must join their colleagues in the social studies of science to look at the practice of social research. Through an analysis of the uses of functionalism, individualism, and interpretation in social research, Kincaid convincingly argues that both the natural sciences and the social sciences have a common core of scientific rationality based on naturalism and holism. Thus, social phenomena must be viewed as products of the natural world, and they must be explained in terms of other large-scale (social) phenomena. As his major test case, Kincaid successfully demonstrates that even modern economics does not present a threat to either naturalism or holism. This work is highly recommended to philosophers of science, social scientists, and graduate students in philosophy or in any of the social sciences. M. Oromaner Hudson County Community College