The Nature of Social Laws: Machiavelli to Mill

by Robert Brown

• ISBN13: 9780521338295
• ISBN10: 0521338298
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1986-08-29
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

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.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

From isolated generalisations to the 'circle of commerce'

Political principles and unintended consequences

Social explanation as applied psychology

The causal laws of social progress

The methods of social economy

Vico's humanistic science of history

Comte and the objective knowledge of social stages

J. S. Mill: the structure of a social science

Conclusion

Index

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