- ISBN-10: 1626521026
- ISBN-13: 9781626521025
- Author: Michael Agar
- Language: English
We need a human social science that begins and ends in the real worlds of the humans that it claims to be about. One has been around for a couple of hundred years. The Lively Science tells the story of its historical roots and the reasons for its neglect, blends in new intellectual tools, and argues that it’s time to get on with a science that changes research objects into human subjects and learns who they are and what they’re trying to do before conclusions are drawn.
The Lively Science tackles some difficult philosophical issues in an accessible way without trivializing them. It is informally written, in a personal and conversational style. It tells researchers they need to get out more and builds a scientific approach to human social life that starts and finishes in the world they actually live in. This alternative human social science appears to be on the upswing in recent times, in academic disciplines and in the real world. The Lively Science provides a coherent overview of what it is and how it works.