{"product_id":"explanation-of-social-action-with-a-new-preface-by-the-author-9780197601624","title":"Explanation of Social Action: With a New Preface by the Author","description":"\u003cem\u003eThe Explanation of Social Action\u003c\/em\u003e is a sustained critique of the conventional understanding of what it means to explain something in the social sciences. It makes the strong argument that the traditional understanding involves asking questions that have no clear foundation and provoke an\u003cbr\u003eunnecessary tension between lay and expert vocabularies. Drawing on the history and philosophy of the social sciences, John Levi Martin exposes the root of the problem as an attempt to counterpose two radically different types of answers to the question of why someone did a certain thing: first\u003cbr\u003eperson and third person responses. The tendency is epitomized by attempts to explain human action in causal terms. Martin, instead of assuming that there is something fundamentally arbitrary about the cognitive schemes of actors, focuses on the nature of judgment. He argues that the most promising\u003cbr\u003eway forward to such a science of social aesthetics will involve a rigorous field theory. This paperback edition includes a new preface, in which Martin connects \u003cem\u003eThe Explanation of Social Action \u003c\/em\u003eto deep neural networks that are important to the study of artificial intelligence and to the development\u003cbr\u003eof computational social science.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJohn Levi Martin \u003c\/strong\u003eis Florence Borchert Bartling Professor of Sociology at The University of Chicago. He is also the author of \u003cem\u003eThinking Through Theory\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eSocial Structures, \u003c\/em\u003e which was awarded the 2010 Theory Prize from the American Sociological Association.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Oxford University Press, USA","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50862039040274,"sku":"9780197601624","price":36.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_ac517b3c-bd04-44a2-8f41-764693bdb85e.jpg?v=1737610987","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/explanation-of-social-action-with-a-new-preface-by-the-author-9780197601624","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}