Early Origins of the Social Sciences

Against these contentions she shows, for example, that women social thinkers have been active in every age since the sixteenth century. McDonald presents these women's work as evidence of the way in which the empirical social sciences have been employed by social reformers, including advocates for the equality of women, to challenge the state and those in authority. She argues as well that Weber's "interpretative sociology" has been misinterpreted, citing his extensive, but usually ignored, quantitative work. Despite the supposed opposition of interpretative and mainstream sociology, McDonald maintains that many of the founders of the discipline explored both. Covering the important eras in the development of the social sciences, she deals with the early Greeks, the seventeenth-century emergence of the scientific method (especially Bacon, Descartes, and Locke), the French Enlightenment, (especially Voltaire, Diderot, Condorcet, and Germaine de Stael), and British moral philosophy (especially Hume, Smith, and Catharine Macauley). From the nineteenth century she includes figures such as Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Quetelet, Harriet Martineau, Florence Nightingale, J.S.Mill, Harriet Taylor Mill, and Beatrice Webb.

"In the context of current debates in the social sciences this book represents a much needed contrary perspective ... It is a valuable contribution to ongoing debates and one that, to date, has no precedent. The coverage is exemplary, including as it does many theorists whose work and ideas were critical to the empiricist-positivist tradition but who have been overlooked in previous accounts dealing with this material." Rosalind Sydie, Department of Sociology, University of Alberta.

Lynn McDonald is professor emerita in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Guelph.