Beyond Empiricism expands the discourse on theories of criminal behavior. It considers institutional, social, and individual issues related to criminal behavior, while individually each raises questions about the adequacy of current theoretical claims. The topics have significant implications both for policy and research in criminology. Per-Olof Wikstrom introduces a cross-level action theory of crime. He suggests that better understanding of causal mechanisms can lead to a situational theory of action based on perception of alternatives and the process of choice. David Wolcott and Steven Schlossman provide new perspectives on the issues of racial disparity and the incarceration of adolescents in adult prisons. These authors highlight gaps in our understanding of early twentieth-century juvenile justice and negate some popular claims about recent changes in the criminal law. Peter Grabosky spotlights privatization policies in the criminal justice system, suggesting a framework for analyzing the balance of advantage resulting from three basic forms of institutional relationships in policing. Steven Messner and Richard Rosenfeld discuss why institutional analysis has been seriously underdeveloped in etiological analyses of crime. Jordan Pederson and Matthew Shane scrutinize the concept of aggression. Their descriptions of aggressive behavior among non-human animals provide a fascinating backdrop for understanding human actions. Joan McCord emphasizes the intentionality of crimes as she argues that to understand what causes crime, one must have a theory about what it means to act intentionally. After critically appraising prior theories, McCord introduces and defends a new theory of motivation based on a post-empiricist theory of language. This latest volume in the distinguished Advances in Criminological Theory series continues to add to the theoretical underpinnings of the field, and will be important to all collections of social science research on criminology.

Originally published in 1982. This volume explores some features of modern philosophy of science from the point of view of their utility for sociology’s self-understanding. Recently philosophers of science have broken with the empiricism once fundamental to their discipline, and have sought alternative methods of science. Founded on the belief that these developments are significant for sociologists, the book explores the failings of the old "received view" and some of the more recent alternatives. It proposes a schematic outline of the structure of inquiry, paying detailed attention to questions about the nature of theory, explanation and demonstration.

For the last forty years, two claims have been at the core of disputes about scientific change: that scientists reason rationally and that science is progressive. For most of this time discussions were polarized between philosophers, who defended traditional Enlightenment ideas about rationality and progress, and sociologists, who espoused relativism and constructivism. Recently, creative new ideas going beyond the polarized positions have come from the history of science, feminist criticism of science, psychology of science, and anthropology of science. Addressing the traditional arguments as well as building on these new ideas, Miriam Solomon constructs a new epistemology of science. After discussions of the nature of empirical success and its relation to truth, Solomon offers a new, social account of scientific rationality. She shows that the pursuit of empirical success and truth can be consistent with both dissent and consensus, and that the distinction between dissent and consensus is of little epistemic significance. In building this social epistemology of science, she shows that scientific communities are not merely the locus of distributed expert knowledge and a resource for criticism but also the site of distributed decision making. Throughout, she illustrates her ideas with case studies from late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century physical and life sciences. Replacing the traditional focus on methods and heuristics to be applied by individual scientists, Solomon emphasizes science funding, administration, and policy. One of her goals is to have a positive influence on scientific decision making through practical social recommendations.

Beyond Empiricism: Michael Polanyi Reconsidered systemati- cally presents Michael Polanyi's concepts of modern science and the modern scientist. Professor Kane argues thar despite all attempts to establish empirical parameters, Polanyi is correct in his assertion that science rises upon metaphysical bedrock. Kane then establishes parallels between the structure of scientific validity and the scientist himself where the «non-empirical» aspects of the former are reflected in the «non-explicit» elements of the latter. Polanyi's concepts of imagination and intuition are refined and their inter- action in the process of discovery is explained. A variety of practical implications for the scientific and especially educational communities is offered.

This book proposes a novel position in the debate on scientific realism: Modal Empiricism. Modal empiricism is the view that the aim of science is to provide theories that correctly delimit, in a unified way, the range of experiences that are naturally possible given our position in the world. The view is associated with a pragmatic account of scientific representation and an original notion of situated modalities, together with an inductive epistemology for modalities. It purports to provide a faithful account of scientific practice and of its impressive achievements, and defuses the main motivations for scientific realism. More generally, Modal Empiricism purports to be the precise articulation of a pragmatist stance towards science. This book is of interest to any philosopher involved in the debate on scientific realism, or interested in how to properly understand the content, aim and achievements of science.