The Flight from Reality in the Human Sciences
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The Flight from Reality in the Human Sciences

The Flight from Reality in the Human Sciences


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About the Book

In this captivating yet troubling book, Ian Shapiro offers a searing indictment of many influential practices in the social sciences and humanities today. Perhaps best known for his critique of rational choice theory, Shapiro expands his purview here. In discipline after discipline, he argues, scholars have fallen prey to inward-looking myopia that results from - and perpetuates - a flight from reality. In the method-driven academic culture we inhabit, argues Shapiro, researchers too often make display and refinement of their techniques the principal scholarly activity. The result is that they lose sight of the objects of their study. Pet theories and methodological blinders lead unwelcome facts to be ignored, sometimes not even perceived. The targets of Shapiro's critique include the law and economics movement, overzealous formal and statistical modeling, various reductive theories of human behavior, misguided conceptual analysis in political theory, and the Cambridge school of intellectual history. As an alternative to all of these, Shapiro makes a compelling case for problem-driven social research, rooted in a realist philosophy of science and an antireductionist view of social explanation. In the lucid - if biting - prose for which Shapiro is renowned, he explains why this requires greater critical attention to how problems are specified than is usually undertaken. He illustrates what is at stake for the study of power, democracy, law, and ideology, as well as in normative debates over rights, justice, freedom, virtue, and community. Shapiro answers many critics of his views along the way, securing his position as one of the distinctive social and political theorists of our time.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments ix INTRODUCTION: Fear of Not Flying 1 CHAPTER ONE: The Difference That Realism Makes: Social Science and the Politics of Consent by Ian Shapiro and Alexander Wendt 19 CHAPTER TWO: Revisiting the Pathologies of Rational Choice by Donald Green and Ian Shapiro 51 CHAPTER THREE: Richard Posner's Praxis 100 CHAPTER FOUR: Gross Concepts in Political Argument 152 CHAPTER FIVE: Problems, Methods, and Theories in the Study of Politics: Or, What's Wrong with Political Science and What to Do about It 178 CHAPTER SIX: The Political Science Discipline: A Comment on David Laitin 204 Index 213

About the Author :
Ian Shapiro is the Sterling Professor of Political Science at Yale University, where he also serves as Henry R. Luce Director of the Yale Center for International and Area Studies. Among his many books are "Containment" [Princeton], "The State of Democratic Theory" and, with Michael J. Graetz, "Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Fight over Taxing Inherited Wealth" (Princeton); and "The Moral Foundations of Politics".

Review :
In these probing essays ... Ian Shapiro offers a disturbing portrait of contemporary social science... [He] calls for academics to reconnect the academic enterprise to the real world by returning to problem-driven social inquiry--an urging that scholars of international relations and other fields should indeed ponder. -- G. John Ikenberry Foreign Affairs Have you ever had difficulty talking to a political scientist about politics? If so, this book is for you. In a searing indictment of over-professionalization in the humanities and social sciences, Yale University's Ian Shapiro argues that across disciplines, academics have abandoned truth, so to speak, for method... The Flight from Reality lays the foundation for reengaging scholarship with the historical world, by reminding us of its necessary role in public life. Tikkun Magazine [B]oth political scientists and politicians can learn something from Shapiro's thoughtful reflections on the state of his discipline. -- Alan Wolff Chronicle of Higher Education Shapiro's book is an important addition to recent debates about the proper practice of social inquiry. Its central thesis is undeniably important, and its engagements with influential thinkers and ideas is consistently stimulating. It therefore merits the careful attention of anyone who is interested in the state of the human sciences today. -- Keith Topper Ethics


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Product Details
  • ISBN-13: 9780691120577
  • Publisher: Princeton University Press
  • Publisher Imprint: Princeton University Press
  • Height: 235 mm
  • No of Pages: 232
  • Returnable: Y
  • Width: 152 mm
  • ISBN-10: 0691120579
  • Publisher Date: 28 Aug 2005
  • Binding: Hardback
  • Language: English
  • Returnable: Y
  • Weight: 482 gr


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