Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Social Sciences
About this ebook
"Byron Kaldis′ Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Social Sciences is a triumph. The entries are consistently good, the coverage is amazing, and he has managed to involve the whole scholarly community in this field. It shows off the field very well, and will be a magnificent resource for students and others." -- Stephen Turner, USF, USA "
Like all good works of reference this Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Social Sciences is not to be treated passively: it provides clear and sometimes controversial material for constructive confrontation. It is a rich resource for critical engagement. The Encyclopedia conceived and edited by Byron Kaldis is a work of impressive scope and I am delighted to have it on my bookshelf."-- David Bloor, Edinburgh, UK
"This splendid and possibly unique work steers a skilful course between narrower conceptions of philosophy and the social sciences. It will be an invaluable resource for students and researchers in either or both fields, and to anyone working on the interrelations between them." -- William Outhwaite, Newcastle, UK
"A work of vast scope and widely gathered expertise, the Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Social Sciences is a splendid resource for anyone interested in the interface between philosophy and the social sciences." --Nicholas Rescher, Pittsburgh
This encyclopedia is the first of its kind in bringing together philosophy and the social sciences. It is not only about the philosophy of the social sciences but, going beyond that, it is also about the relationship between philosophy and the social sciences.
The subject of this encyclopedia is purposefully multi- and inter-disciplinary. Knowledge boundaries are both delineated and crossed over. The goal is to convey a clear sense of how philosophy looks at the social sciences and to mark out a detailed picture of how the two are interrelated: interwoven at certain times but also differentiated and contrasted at others. The Entries cover topics of central significance but also those that are both controversial and on the cutting-edge, underlining the unique mark of this Encyclopedia: the interrelationship between philosophy and the social sciences, especially as it is found in fresh ideas and unprecedented hybrid disciplinary areas.
The Encyclopedia serves a further dual purpose: it contributes to the renewal of the philosophy of the social sciences and helps to promote novel modes of thinking about some of its classic problems.
"The Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Social Sciences edited by Byron Kaldis, provides a unique, needed, and invaluable resource for researchers at every level. Unique because nothing else offers the breadth of coverage found in this work; needed because it permits researchers to find longer but also relatively brief, clear, but nonetheless expert articles introducing important topics; and invaluable because of the guidance offered to both related topics and further study. It should be the place that any interested person looks first when seeking to learn about philosophy and the social sciences." Paul Roth, UC Santa Cruz, USA
"The Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Social Sciences edited by Byron Kaldis covers an enormous range of topics in philosophy and the social sciences and the entries are compact overviews of the essential issues" Harold Kincaid, University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA
About the author
Byron Kaldis, BA Honours (University of Kent), DPhil (University of Oxford), is Professor of Philosophy and Director of Studies in the School of Humanities at the Hellenic Open University. He has previously held positions at universities in the United Kingdom, United States, and Greece and has recently been a visiting scholar in the departments of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Helsinki. He will be again a visiting scholar at Harvard University and Rutgers University.He has taught and published in the areas of the philosophy of social sciences, metaphysics and epistemology, history of philosophy and political thought, and the ethics of technoscience. He currently works on the relationship between philosophical issues in cognition and social ontology.He is the editor of a forthcoming edited volume: Mind and Society: Cognitive Science Meets the Social Sciences, to appear in the Synthese Library of Studies in Epistemology, Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science, and co-editor of another forthcoming edited volume titled: Wealth, Commerce and Philosophy published by The University of Chicago Press. Byron Kaldis will be editor of a new academic book series in the philosophy of the social sciences and serves as member of the advisory board on the philosophy of sociality book series at Springer. In 2011, he launched together with colleagues the European Network for the Philosophy of the Social Sciences (ENPOSS).
