Before the Second World War, social scientists struggled to define and defend their disciplines. After the war, "high modern" social scientists harnessed new resources in a quest to create a unified understanding of human behavior—and to remake the world in the image of their new model man. In Age of System, Hunter Heyck explains why social scientists—shaped by encounters with the ongoing "organizational revolution" and its revolutionary technologies of communication and control—embraced a new and extremely influential perspective on science and nature, one that conceived of all things in terms of system, structure, function, organization, and process. He also explores how this emerging unified theory of human behavior implied a troubling similarity between humans and machines, with freighted implications for individual liberty and self-direction. These social scientists trained a generation of decision-makers in schools of business and public administration, wrote the basic textbooks from which millions learned how the economy, society, polity, culture, and even the mind worked, and drafted the position papers, books, and articles that helped set the terms of public discourse in a new era of mass media, think tanks, and issue networks. Drawing on close readings of key texts and a broad survey of more than 1,800 journal articles, Heyck follows the dollars—and the dreams—of a generation of scholars that believed in "the system." He maps the broad landscape of changes in the social sciences, focusing especially intently on the ideas and practices associated with modernization theory, rational choice theory, and modeling. A highly accomplished historian, Heyck relays this complicated story with unusual clarity.
...MoreReview Daniel Bessner (April 2018) Review of "Age of System: Understanding the Development of Modern Social Science". Technology and Culture (pp. 494-496).
Review Paul Erickson (2018) Review of "Age of System: Understanding the Development of Modern Social Science". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 221-222).
Review Michael J. Zickar (2016) Review of "Age of System: Understanding the Development of Modern Social Science". Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences (pp. 202-203).
Book
Crowther-Heyck, Hunter;
(2005)
Herbert A. Simon: The Bounds of Reason in Modern America
(/isis/citation/CBB000520048/)
Article
Gunnell, John G.;
(2013)
The Reconstitution of Political Theory: David Easton, Behavioralism, and the Long Road to System
(/isis/citation/CBB001320229/)
Thesis
Henry M. Cowles;
(2015)
A Method Only: The Evolving Meaning of Science in the United States, 1830–1910
(/isis/citation/CBB906014347/)
Article
García Cruz, Cándido Manuel;
(2007)
De la “Teoría de la Tierra” de James Hutton a la “Hipótesis Gaia” de James Lovelock
(/isis/citation/CBB000831504/)
Article
Ofran, Yanay;
(2008)
The Two Cultures and Systems Biology: How Philosophy Starts Where Science Ends
(/isis/citation/CBB001030486/)
Book
Pursell, Carroll W.;
(2005)
Companion to American technology
(/isis/citation/CBB001180187/)
Chapter
Roberto Serra;
(2015)
Proprietà generiche nei sistemi complessi
(/isis/citation/CBB320748884/)
Article
Jewett, Andrew;
(2013)
The Social Sciences, Philosophy, and the Cultural Turn in the 1930s USDA
(/isis/citation/CBB001213806/)
Book
Backhouse, Roger E.;
(2000)
Early Histories of Economic Thought 1824-1914
(/isis/citation/CBB000101659/)
Thesis
Williams, Lambert;
(2012)
Modeling, Building, Writing: A History of Nonlinear Dynamics and Complex Systems
(/isis/citation/CBB001561027/)
Article
Winthrop-Young, Geoffrey;
(2003)
On a Species of Origin: Luhmann's Darwin
(/isis/citation/CBB000500961/)
Chapter
Jean Petitot;
(2016)
"Sutor, ne supra crepidam". Le rationalisme critique et les sciences sociales
(/isis/citation/CBB711745777/)
Book
Gorton, William A.;
(2006)
Karl Popper and the Social Sciences
(/isis/citation/CBB000772777/)
Article
Cichocki, Piotr;
Kilarski, Marcin;
(2010)
On “Eskimo Words for Snow”: The Life Cycle of a Linguistic Misconception
(/isis/citation/CBB001211617/)
Book
Verdes-Leroux, Jeannine;
(2001)
Deconstructing Pierre Bourdieu: Against Sociological Terrorism from the Left
(/isis/citation/CBB000102151/)
Chapter
Valentine, Elisabeth R.;
(2001)
G. F. Stout's Philosophical Psychology
(/isis/citation/CBB000102706/)
Book
Karl Popper;
(2002)
The Poverty of Historicism
(/isis/citation/CBB204504157/)
Article
Pareti, Germana;
(2017)
Le radici lontane della neuroscienza delle reti.
(/isis/citation/CBB948024614/)
Chapter
Eleonora Montuschi;
(2023)
Realismo/antirealismo e scienze sociali
(/isis/citation/CBB593553557/)
Book
Chad Alan Goldberg;
(2017)
Modernity and the Jews in Western Social Thought
(/isis/citation/CBB694231685/)
Be the first to comment!