The Human Difference: Animals, Computers, and the Necessity of Social Science

By Alan Wolfe

Book Overview

"An eloquent and exquisitely reasoned plea for a social science based on what is distinctively human about human beings-their capacity to create meaning by the forms of interpretation that make human culture possible. This book is a lively attack on the growing antihumanism of so much contemporary social science, and it deserves a wide audience."
-Jerome Bruner, New York University

"Wolfe's style of argument is of enormous scope, virtuosity, clarity, and grace. In The Human Difference he will force both his sympathizers and his detractors to reflect profoundly upon the proper meaning and purpose of the social sciences."
-Neil J. Smelser, University of California

"There is much to be learned from his cognitive map which locates sociology in its relations to the other social sciences, literary theory, and the biological and physical sciences."
-Robert Merton, Columbia University

"Argued with the intensity and skill of a defense attorney for the human species, Wolfe takes on sociobiology, artificial intelligence research, ecology and post-modernism .... This book) will generate discussion. The analyses of contemporary theoretical thought are accessible and well-documented."
-Diane Miller, The Great Plains Sociologist

"Wolfe calls for a return to the works of Ourkheim, Weber, Mead, and Marx as a means of resurrecting a sociology capable of responding to human difference and reflecting the ambiguity and ambivalence that arises from it. ... Compelling and provocative."
-Choice

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520089413
• ISBN13: 9780520089419
• Release Date: August 1994
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 243 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.9" x 8.8"