Product Description: Why does contemporary calculation proceed as calculation of the quality of everything, to the extent that quality comes to be perceived as a controversial word, endowed with enigmatic power? How should we consider calculation of quality? And how, from the perspective of quality, can we renew questioning on the very nature of the calculative and on the (in)calculability of the human? In what way should we approach quality and calculability in current socio-economic and managerial scenarios? In considering quality of life and its calculation, how can we reflect on the issue of life enhancement? What does it mean that, precisely under the banner of quality, life, in its individuality and totality, emerges as being obviously calculable and enhanceable? How should we think of quality, calculation and life when life resonates on the scale of the post-human? These are some of the main questions that the book addresses through a phenomenological investigation and an analysis of the social science debate...read more

This is an expanded and thoroughly revised edition of the widely adopted introduction to the philosophical foundations of the human sciences. Ranging from cultural anthropology to mathematical economics, Alexander Rosenberg leads the reader through behaviorism, naturalism, interpretativism about human action, and macrosocial scientific perspectives, illuminating the motivation and strategy of each.Rewritten throughout to increase accessibility, this new edition retains the remarkable achievement of revealing the social sciences' enduring relation to the fundamental problems of philosophy. It includes new discussions of positivism, European philosophy of history, causation, statistical laws, quantitative models, and postempiricist social science, along with a completely updated literature guide that keys chapters to widely anthologized papers.