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The History and Phj~osophy of Social Science, Scott Gordon (London and New York: Routledge Publishers, 1991) 690 pp., E70.00 doth.

This is a most ambitious effort on a diverse set of subjects. Professor Gordon has written at one and the same time a philosophy of social science; a sociology of knowledge review of the conduct of research; a random history of great moments in nineteenth- century social science; and a series of reviews on major findings and errors in classical economics and antiquarian sociology. Indeed, at the risk of being unsympathetic to the goals of the enterprise, perhaps there are simply too many objects ofintellectnal desire to make for an enduring love affair.

That said, T&e History and Philosophy of Social Science is a work that should be read and deserves serious attention from the relevant professional communities. Given the fact that this book is part text, part monograph, and covers a wide variety offields over a great amount of time, it might be easy to overlook Professor Gordon’s work in favour of more conventional treatises. That would be unfortunate. While the book demands of the reader more than the author can deliver, it needs to be examined in terms of both what it accomplishes and what it fails ta accomplish-on its own terms,

Certainly, the author does not make this easy. This work is technically exasperating. The principle organisation of The History and Philosophy of Social Science is largely historical, while the analysis is largely methodological. If this makes for dense, even opaque, reading, theauthor has only himselfto blame. For he intends his book to consider synthesis and analysis at the same time. The problem is that the world of modern social science is simply too complex and diverse to admit easy dismissals or opaque defences. The Baconian search for a great renewal of learning, which is the central subject of this book, clearly remains worthwhiIe. Whether that search has been crowned with success in this volume is something else again.

On the plus side of the ledger, Mr Gordon has given the reader a masterful survey of political economy and political sociology through the nineteenth century. Had he stuck to this framework, and left for a second volume a review of the twentieth century, he would have had a far more compelling volume. For while his sense of Marx, Engels, Malthus, Ricardo, the Enlightenment figures, the Physiocrats, the Scottish moralists, Saint-Simon, Comte, Spencer and Durkheim, is often right as well as compelling, the same cannot be said of the themes and figures covered from the twentieth century.

To be sure, even the notion of the twentieth century for Professor Gordon does not progress much beyond Weber in sociology and Keynes in economics. One could make an argument in both cases (but more so for Weber) that their work is the natural extension and conclusion of discussions that occupied the nineteenth-century greats. Gordon leaves us with a hurried and scattered set of statements about value theory and the foundations of science that deserve a far more ample analysis.

At the historicai level, the problem Gordon’s work cannot resoive is how the social sciences moved from a European to an American base. Indeed, had the work stopped with Spencer, Durkheim and Weber, this failing might have proven less critical, but since its aims are ambitious and contemporary, the absence of any full scale review of the Americanisation of the social sciences becomes a yawning, gaping hole. The work of Lester Ward, William Sumner;Franklin Giddings, Charles H. Cooley, Albion Small and Edward Ross-among others-simply is not addressed, even in footnotes and brief asides (never mind social science in America after World War One). For work on the cross- fertilisation of European and American thought, the philosophical presuppositions of American social theories, and just where people like Thorstein Veblen, Wesley C. Mitchell and John R. Commons fit in the English neo-classical as well as post-Marxian debates, again are simply not covered. Consequently, to get a sense of the subject supposedly covered by Gordon’s book we must repair ourselves to Dorothy Ross’ great book on T&z

122 Book Reviews

Origins of American Social Science; Roscoe C. Hinkle’s still very impressive (sadly neglected) Founding Theory of American Sociology: 1881-1915; and Robert A. Nisbet’s magisterial book on The Sociological Tradition.

At the analytic level, Gordon’s view of objectivity in research design as the apex of science as such, would be applauded by most researchers. He is quite within his bounds to argue the case for objectivity as an ideal, if not always an achievement, and the need to organise scientific work to enhance this idea. The work ends with a rousing, albeit belated, critique of the negative consequences of importing partianship into Soviet science. Were this theme developed earlier on-starting from his discussion of Marx and Engels, the sources of the distortions of the Lysenkos and Bukharins who followed, and not as an afterthought of the debacle of communism in theory and practice-this position would have proven more compelling. Alas, Gordon’s position comes more as an afterthought than as an integral part of his analysis. One is led to believe that it was current events, the utter collapse of communism in Europe, that motivated a conclusion for which the bulk of the book leaves us quite unprepared.

At times, the author becomes argumentative rather than analytic. Thus we are told that Weber’s writings, especially The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism lacks lucidity, is essentially in error, and ultimately, that we are justified in paying little attention to its root thesis. The problem is that the author is so unsympathetic to the position that he neglects to give a proper exposition of what Weber actually said. He does somewhat better on Weber’s ideas concerning authority, charisma and bureaucracy, but curiously, when the author has a view largely sympathetic to Weber’s, as in the recognition of the distinction between fact and value, he instead asks why Weber did not present a grand plan for the democratic future organisation of society. Gordon wants Weber to speak with the authority of Comte and Durkheim, precisely after explaining that Weber held that it is beyond the purview of social science to do so.

By the same token, Gordon offers a vigorous examination of Marx’s labour theory of value as central to Marxist thought. However, here again, we have a heavily argumentative segment of the book. The author takes on all critics, including Engels, who sought to modify or limit the concept because of its obvious shortcomings as a moral doctrine of exploitation rather than an empirical examination establishing the ratio of costs to prices. In his sympathetic appreciation of Marx as interested in the function of the economy as a whole, and hence not terribly concerned about certain nuances or loopholes in his theory of value, price and profit, Gordon shows himself to be a masterful polemicist and analyst. His exposition of Marxism as an ethical naturalism is benign, and certainly puts the best face on a doctrine fallen into hard times when implemented in ‘practice’. Could it be that the very effort of Marx to give a broad outline of the good society and the happy future-something Weber refused to do in the name of social science-will ultimately determine how both of these figures are viewed in intellectual history? Unfortunately, Gordon does not consider such a possibility. Perhaps he remains too enamoured of the classical figures he examined.

In flitting about historically, and no less, interspersing narrative, exposition and opinion so liberally, the book ultimately fails in its grand purpose: explaining the history and philosophy of social science. In a nutshell: what is historically relevant may lack philosophical interest; and vice versa, what is of philosophic concern in the theories and methods devised by social research, may operate within the internal nature of each discipline, but not respond to evolutionary criteria at all. Gordon senses this in devoting his final segments to sociobiology followed by Keynesian macroeconomics-both interesting discussions but hardly integrated.

Despite my criticisms of the design and overall execution of the book, it remains a worthwhile book to read as a series of animadversions-a set of rough and tough comments on classical themes and figures. The segment on the Marxian theory of society

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is a nice little book. The segment on Spencer, Durkheim and Weber is another nice little book (each of slightly under 100 pages; or one third of the book). The earlier chapters on

social laws, politica1 theory and the physiocrats display Professor Gordon’s versatility in subject matter and catholicity of taste. Alas, those little books, supplemented by articles one might admire in journals, do not add up to the big book which the author obviously sought to create.

Rutgers University Irving Louis Horowitz

The Secularization of the European Mind in the 19th Century, Owen Chadwick, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), Canto edn, 286 pp., $8.95 P.B.

This book, first published in 1975, presents the text of Owen Chadwick’s 1974-S Gifford Lectures in a new paperback imprint. In these lectures Chadwick tackles an elusive topic-the gradual disappearance from Western society of a whole system of beliefs and practices. In his investigation, Chadwick embarked upon what was then ‘a relatively new branch of research’- one which combined traditional intellectual history with the fruits of sociological research. Chadwick then contended that intellectual historians ought to take more seriously the social-economic matrix in which ideas come to be accepted. ‘Old-fashioned’ histories of ideas which took as their subject the secularisation of the European mind had tended to ignore what it was that ‘ordinary men’ believed, and had overlooked the vast gap between the inception of new ideas amongst the intelligentsia and the subsequent appropriation of those ideas by the general population. In consequence, they had mistakenly focused upon the Enlightenment as the crucible of the modern secular thought. Chadwick corrects their aim, arguing persuasively that the foundations of religious belief underwent their most significant changes in the second half of the nineteenth century. For all this, Chadwick remains very much a traditional historian, and by claiming secularisation for the historian, he injected historical substance into what had become almost exclusively the theoretical playground of the sociologist.

Chadwick’s approach to the topic is reflected in the two sections into which the book is divided-one dealing with the social background, the other with the intellectual climate. The first part charts the influence of Liberalism and Marxism, explores attitudes of ‘the worker’ and the rise of anticlericalism. Chadwick concludes that ‘Marxist theory is the most influential of all symbols for the process of secularization in the nineteenth century’ (p. 67). The second part deals with intellectual currents. The reception of Voltaire in the nineteenth century is used as a litmus for the general acceptance of the secularising force of the Enlightenment. There follow discussions of the impact of historical criticism, the relationship between science and religion, perceptions of the link between religion and morality, and the doctrine of providence. It is in this treatment of intellectual concerns that Chadwick excels. Perhaps the most impressive chapter is that devoted to science and religion. Here Chadwick guides the reader through ‘that mysterious land which divides an intellectual advance from its popular consequences’, providing an illuminating account of how a new scientific theory-in this instance Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection-is appropriated by popular culture. He further illustrates the general principle