Sociology and Scientism: The American Quest for Objectivity, 1880-1940

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UNC Press Books, 1987 - 312 pages
During the 1920s a new generation of American sociologists tried to make their discipline more objective by adopting the methodology of the natural sciences. Robert Bannister provides the first comprehensive account of the emergence of this "objectivism"
 

Contents

Introduction
3
An Ambiguous Legacy
13
The Social Organism
32
From Telos to Technique
47
First Principles
64
Pluralistic Behaviorism
75
Up from Metaphysics
87
The Authority of Fact
98
A Better Code
161
A Pile of Knowledge
173
Rehearsal for Rebellion
188
Democracy
200
Defeat
215
Conclusion
231
Notes
239
Bibliography
273

An Objective Standard
111
Misbehaviorism
128
The Patrician as Technician
144

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About the author (1987)

Robert C. Bannister, professor of history at Swarthmore College, is author of Ray Stannard Baker: The Mind and Thought of a Progressive and Social Darwinism: Science and Myth.

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