There is No Such Thing as a Social Science: In Defence of Peter Winch

Aldershot, UK & Burlington, VT: Ashgate (2008)
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Abstract

The death of Peter Winch in 1997 sparked a revived interest in his work with this book arguing his work suffered misrepresentation in both recent literature and in contemporary critiques of his writing. Debates in philosophy and sociology about foundational questions of social ontology and methodology often claim to have adequately incorporated and moved beyond Winch's concerns. Re-establishing a Winchian voice, the authors examine how such contentions involve a failure to understand central themes in Winch's writings and that the issues which occupied him in his Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy and later papers remain central to social studies. The volume offers a careful reading of the text in alliance with Wittgensteinian insights and alongside a focus on the nature and results of social thought and inquiry. It draws parallels with other movements in the social studies, notably ethnomethodology, to demonstrate how Winch's central claim is both more significant and more difficult to transcend than sociologists and philosophers have hitherto imagined.

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Author Profiles

Phil Hutchinson
Manchester Metropolitan University
William Wesley Sharrock
University of Manchester

Citations of this work

The Idea of Philosophy and Its Relation to Social Science.Mark Theunissen - 2014 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 44 (2):151-178.
Peter Winch on the Concept of Persuasion.Raffaele Durante - 2015 - Philosophical Investigations 39 (2):100-122.
Rules, Intentions and Social Behavior: A Reassessment of Peter Winch.Jordi Fairhurst - 2019 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 50 (4):429-445.

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References found in this work

Inquiries Into Truth And Interpretation.Donald Davidson - 1984 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
The Concept of Mind.Gilbert Ryle - 1949 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 141:125-126.
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.Ludwig Wittgenstein - 1956 - Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 12 (1):109-110.
Mind and World.John McDowell - 1996 - Philosophical Quarterly 46 (182):99-109.
Must we mean what we say?Stanley Cavell - 1969 - New York,: Scribner.

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