The question Jon Elster addresses in this challenging book is what binds societies together and prevents them from disintegrating into chaos and war. He analyses two concepts of social order: stable, predictable patterns of behaviour, and co-operative behaviour. The book examines various aspects of collective action and bargaining from the perspective of rational-choice theory ...(展开全部)

A Survey of Metaphysics provides a systematic overview of modern metaphysics, covering all of the most important topics likely to be encountered on a metaphysics course. The conception of metaphysics underlying the book is the fairly traditional and widely-shared one that metaphysics deals with the deepest questions that can be raised concerning the fundamental structure of re...(展开全部)

The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics is a 1977 book by Hedley Bull and a founding text of the so called English School of international relations theory. The title refers to the assumption of anarchy in the international system (posited primarily by realists) and argues for the existence of an international society. The book also outlines Bull's theory of ...(展开全部)

The Anarchical Society is one of the masterworks of political science and the classic text on the nature of order in world politics. Originally published in 1977, it continues to define and shape the discipline of international relations. This edition has been updated with a new, interpretive foreword by Andrew Hurrell. Bull explores three fundamental questions: What is order i...(展开全部)

Written from the standpoint of the social behaviorist, this treatise contains the heart of Mead's position on social psychology. The analysis of language is of major interest, as it supplied for the first time an adequate treatment of the language mechanism in relation to scientific and philosophical issues. "If philosophical eminence be measured by the extent to which a man's...(展开全部)

This important social survey, first published in 192l, and illustrated with over fifty photographs and nearly forty maps and diagrams, contains invaluable data from questionnaires collected from a cross-section of the population of Peking between September 1918 and December 1919. The result is a comprehensive record of all aspects of life and conditions in the capital - from go...(展开全部)

Preface A Theory Is Explanation 3 1 Explanation in the Social Sciences / George C. Homans 9 B Motives and Mechanisms 15 2 Types of Social Action / Max Weber 22 C The Problem of Social Order 27 3 The Moral Basis of a Backward Society / Edward C. Banfield 33 D Meaning 44 4 The Production of Consciousness / Karl Marx 49 5 The Origin of Beliefs / Emile Durkheim 52 6 Genesis and Dev...(展开全部)

In today’s world, numbers are in the ascendancy. Societies dominated by star ratings, scores, likes and lists are rapidly emerging, as data are collected on virtually every aspect of our lives. From annual university rankings, ratings agencies and fitness tracking technologies to our credit score and health status, everything and everybody is measured and evaluated. In this imp...(展开全部)

From the bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, a concise, elegant exploration of time. Why do we remember the past and not the future? What does it mean for time to “flow”? Do we exist in time or does time exist in us? In lyric, accessible prose, Carlo Rovelli invites us to consider questions about the nature of time that continue to puzzle physicists and philos...(展开全部)

ime is a mystery that does not cease to puzzle us. Philosophers, artists and poets have long explored its meaning while scientists have found that its structure is different from the simple intuition we have of it. From Boltzmann to quantum theory, from Einstein to loop quantum gravity, our understanding of time has been undergoing radical transformations. Time flows at a diffe...(展开全部)