Wittgenstein among the Sciences

Engaging with the question of the extent to which the so-called human economic or social sciences are actually sciences this book moves away from the search for a criterion or definition that will allow us to sharply distinguish the scientific from the non-scientific. Instead the book favours the pursuit of clarity with regard to the various enterprises undertaken by human beings with a view to dissolving the felt need for such a demarcation. In other words Read pursues a 'therapeutic' approach to the issue of the status and nature of these subjects. Discussing the work of Kuhn Winch and Wittgenstein in relation to fundamental question of methodology 'Wittgenstein among the Sciences' undertakes an examination of the nature of (natural) science itself in the light of which a series of successive cases of putatively scientific disciplines are analysed. A novel and significant contribution to social science methodology and the philosophy of science and 'the human sciences' this book will be of interest to social scientists and philosophers as well as to psychiatrists economists and cognitive scientists.