To look outside the discipline of sociology is to find little credibility given to the field as science. Bernard Phillips argues that we are learning to see ever more clearly the contradiction between scientific standards and what in fact has been achieved by sociology. Instead of knowledge based on the full range of our findings, we have separate pieces of knowledge located within the diverse areas of the discipline, and fads and fashions in the ideas and terms we use with relatively little cumulative development. This has led many to question whether any "scientific method" can be applied to human behavior. If the arguments and alternative interpretations in this book on the problematic nature of sociology's use of scientific method prove to be credible and fruitful, then the implications are profound. For example, the conclusions drawn for every single social science study that has ever been conducted would be open to reinterpretation, because they fail to take into account systematically the enormous complexity involved within any given instance of human behavior. Our present approach assumes implicitly that the pieces of the human jigsaw puzzle can at some point be put together so as to yield a coherent picture. Yet, as Phillips shows, if each piece is itself deficient, then no coherent picture emerges when we attempt to put the pieces together. Refusing to take the current fragmentation of sociology as inevitable, Phillips offers a clear vision, through a series of heuristic "web" images, of how sociologists might achieve the cumulative development and credibility that are the hallmarks of any science. His research draws heavily on the works of classical and contemporary theorists, philosophers, and historians of science, as well as on postmodernist critiques and responses to postmodernism. This reconstruction will be useful for courses in method in the study of the classical tradition of sociology. Bernard Phillips was introduced to sociology at Columbia University by C. Wright Mills. A former professor of sociology at Boston University, cofounder of the ASA Section on Sociological Practice and founder of the Sociological Imagination Group, his publications emphasize methodology and theory.

We are currently experiencing a wide range of evolving problems that threaten us with extinction. However, Phillips argues that we have the capacity-with the aid of a broad approach to the scientific method that builds on Mills's concept of "the sociological imagination"-to confront these problems ever more effectively. This book develops and builds upon new methods for addressing such social problems as global warming, terrorism, growing inequalities, and others. Phillips reveals procedures for achieving conscious evolution by uncovering fundamental assumptions and their contradictions and by moving toward alternative assumptions that promise to resolve these contradictions.

Rubén Rosario Rodríguez addresses the long-standing division between Christian theologies that take revelation as their starting point and focus and those that take human culture as theirs. After introducing these two theological streams that originate with Karl Barth and Paul Tillich, respectively, Rosario asserts that they both seek to respond to the Enlightenment's critique and rejection of Christianity. In so doing, they have bought into Enlightenment understandings of human reality and the transcendent. Rosario argues that in order to get beyond the impasse between theologies of the Word and culture, we need a different starting point. He discovers that starting point in two sources: (1) through the work of liberation and contextual theologians on the role of the Holy Spirit, and (2) through a comparative analysis of the teachings on the hiddenness of God from the three “Abrahamic†religions â€"Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Rosario offers a strong argument for why this third theological starting point represents not just a marginal or niche position but a genuine alternative to the two traditional theological streams. His work will shift readers' understanding of the options in theological discourse beyond the false alternatives of theologies of the Word and culture.

Two fundamental problems within the social sciences are the failure to integrate the existing segments of knowledge and a very limited ability to point out directions for solving social problems, given that lack of integrated knowledge.This volume illustrates the integrated work of seven sociologists to reverse this situation not only for the problem of terrorism but also for any substantive or applied problem. C. Wright Mills in The Sociological Imagination castigated the failure to integrate social science knowledge, and this volume carries forward his efforts to analyze human complexity.To understand and confront terrorism we require not only the integration of social science knowledge bearing on that problem, as illustrated by these authors. We also require the integration of that knowledge with the understanding of those on the front lines in order to connect the dots of specialized basic and applied knowledge, which this volume makes possible.

Written by the new generation of sociologists, these essays chart a course for the future of the discipline, both by revisiting forgotten theories and methods and by suggesting innovative theoretical and methodological approaches. Comprised of seven essays on theory and five on methodology, the volume also attempts to reconnect theorists and methodologists in a discussion about the future of the sociological enterprise.

Including contributions from senior scholars in the field who do not rely on the paradigm of planetary Sociology, this volume of Current Perspectives in Social Theory illustrates the importance of scrutinizing links between individual identity and social structure, without employing the paradigm of planetary sociology.

Is there a growing gap in today's world between cultural aspirations and their fulfillment, a gap that is increasing social problems of all kinds? If so, what forces are producing that gap? How can these forces be changed? To answer these questions, Phillips and Johnston employ a very broad approach to the scientific method, drawing evidence from a wide variety of data and sources, including sociologists, psychologists, political scientists, historians, philosophers, educators, psychiatrists, and novelists. They find substantial evidence for a widening gap, suggesting an invisible crisis throughout contemporary society. They also find substantial evidence that a simplistic and static metaphysical stance or worldview is largely responsible for that gap, and that an alternative worldview can work to close that gap.