Patterns of Discovery in the Social Sciences

This work is a "must read" for all social scientists as well as for those wishing to better understand important elements of both the philosophy of social science methodology and the sociology of scientific organization.Diesing explains clearly, using innumerable illustrations, why the most important divisions within modern, empirical social science run along methodological, rather than disciplinary, lines. In the course of doing so, he provides incisive introductions to the methodological approaches themselves (holistic, formal, experimental and survey), showing how they are used in practice and the assumptions, strengths and weaknesses implicit in each. If the book appears to leave any room for criticism it would be in the lack of a more profound differentiation between the experimental (incl. survey, or "quasi-experimental" ) and formal approaches. Diesing fully acknowledges the differences but leaves this task because "....they have already been thoroughly studied and described by methodologists." Given the brilliance of the rest of this work, one would have liked to hear what he has to say about this as well.