Polish Essays in the Methodology of the Social Sciences

Modern philosophy has benefited immensely from the intelligence, and sensitivity, the creative and critical energies, and the lucidity of Polish scholars. Their investigations into the logical and methodological foundations of mathematics, the physical and biological sciences, ethics and esthetics, psychology, linguistics, economics and jurisprudence, and the social science- all are marked by profound and imaginative work. To the centers of empiricist philosophy of science in Vienna, Berlin and Cambridge during the first half of this century, one always added the great school of analytic and methodol ogical studies in Warsaw and Lwow. To the world centers of Marxist theoretical practice in Berlin, Moscow, Paris, Rome and elsewhere, one must add the Poland of the same era, from Ludwik Krzywicki (1859-1941) onward. American socialists and economists will remember the careful work of Oscar Lange, working among us for many years and then after 1945 in Warsaw, always humane, logical, objective. In this volume, our friend and colleague, Jerzy J. Wiatr, has assembled a representative set of recent essays by Polish social scientists and philosophers. Each of these might lead the reader far beyond this book, to look into the Polish Sociological Bulletin which has been publishing Polish sociological studies in English for several decades, to study other translations of books and papers by these authors, and to reflect upon the interplay of logical, phenomenological, Marxist, empiricist and historical learning in modern Polish social understanding.

Inhalt
The Marxist Social Theory and the Challenges of Our Time.- The Concept of Class Interest.- The Conception of Culture According to Karl Marx.- The Problem of Explanation in Karl Marx's Capital.- The Methodological Foundations of Marx's Theory of Class: A Reconstruction.- Structuralism as an Intellectual Current.- Marxism, Functionalism and Systems-Approach.- Methodological Dilemmas of Contemporary Sociology.- Strategy of Theory-Construction in Sociology.- On So-called Historicism in the Social Sciences.- Sociology and Models of Rational Behavior.- Adaptational Superstructure The Problem of Negative Self-regulation.- Biographical Notes.- Name Index.