A comprehensive history of the human sciences-psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics, and political science-from their precursors in early human culture to the present.
This erudite yet accessible volume in Norton's highly praised
History of Science series tracks the long and circuitous path by which human beings came to see themselves and their societies as scientific subjects like any other. Beginning with the Renaissance's rediscovery of Greek psychology, political philosophy, and ethics, Roger Smith recounts how the human sciences gradually organized themselves around a scientific conception of psychology, and how this trend has continued to the present day in a circle of interactions between science and ordinary life, in which the human sciences have influenced and been influenced by popular culture.
Roger Smith has written for television and films since the early sixties; his screenplays include Up the Junction. He has worked with Ken Loach as a script consultant for the past fifteen years and is also a theater director. He is the author of Tycoonery and Inhibition: History and Meaning in the Sciences of Mind and Brain.
