The Nature of Social Laws: Machiavelli to Mill

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CUP Archive, 1984 - 270 стор.
This volume is a study of the development of the idea that human social behaviour is governed by laws comparable to the laws of natural science. The author sets out to provide a clear account of the arguments put forward from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries about the nature and possibility of social laws. Although analytical rather than historical in approach, the discussions are always informed by a knowledge of the relevant context and sufficient detail is provided to characterise the views in question accurately. The critical expositions of the views are presented elegantly and succinctly, in a way which reveals their bearing on the problems involved - problems which are still the subject of lively debate today. The book, which is written with great clarity and balance, will be of interest to students and specialists in the history of ideas, philosophy, law, religion and the histories and methodologies of the different social sciences.

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Acknowledgements page ix
1
Divine legislation for Nature and Society
10
From isolated generalizations to the circle of commerce
25
Political principles and unintended consequences
49
Social explanation as applied psychology
70
The causal laws of social progress
96
The methods of social economy
125
Some economic laws of Malthus and Ricardo
129
Two kinds of explanation
201
Empirical laws and metaphysical causes
204
The social physics of collective events
209
the structure of a social science
213
James Mills principles of human nature
218
Macaulay on experimental method
221
Derivative laws and empirical generalizations
226
Approximate generalizations
230

Natural tendencies and temporary effects
132
J S Mill
136
von Thünen
144
Seniors basic principles of political economy
147
Seniors basic principles criticized
151
Vicos humanistic science of history
158
The necessity of the eternal customs
162
The method of historical knowledge
170
The human creation of history
176
Empathetic understanding and the pattern of history
181
Comte and the objective knowledge of social stages
187
The law of social evolution
192
Knowledge of social wholes
198
Resolving scientific laws
233
Generality and precision in scientific laws
237
The derivation of ethological laws
241
Ethology as an independent science
244
Speculation and social change
248
Conclusion
251
The search for laws vs the search for rules
252
Reducibility and the search for social laws
255
Our commonsense vocabulary and precise laws
257
Can we hope to discover strict social laws?
259
Index
265
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