PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
The death of my co-author, Ian Craib, on the 22 December 2002 has made the preparation of this second edition both poignant and somewhat awesome. Although, rather to the surprise of both of us, we were able to co-write a book with little or no discomfort, there were quite deep differences of philosophical orientation between us (see Appendix I - originally intended to be included as Chapter 11 of the first edition).
I have therefore refrained from any attempt at revision of Ian's chapters and, as a consequence, have left my own as they were. However, in the ten years or so since we wrote our respective sections of the book, the literature of the philosophy of social science has grown. As the rate of change in philosophy and its sub-disciplines is usually quite slow - even ‘glacial' - it is unlikely that a topic such as ours will have been transformed in so short a time-span. Where new developments have seemed to me of particular significance, in clarifying, developing or calling into question our lines of argument in the first edition, I have added a short postscript to the relevant chapter. In most cases, this will refer the reader to a more detailed treatment in the new chapter ‘Commentary on Recent Developments’, written specifically for this edition. Again, published work that has appeared since the first edition has been added to the bibliography. Inevitably, the selection of new work for discussion in this edition would have been different if I had been sharing the task with Ian. Almost certainly significant new thinking has appeared but no one volume could cover all materials. Partly this is because the world of academic publishing has escalated in sheer volume to the point where any claim to ‘completeness' must be treated with scepticism.But also, some of the developments that have taken place more recently bear upon topics and traditions of thought that belong to Ian's share in the division of labour between us.
As well as being less familiar with those topics than was Ian, I also have a somewhat different ‘take' on the issues. So, where I comment on some of this literature (especially in relation to Chapter 6), I have taken the opportunity to include some thoughts of my own that open up differences with Ian's arguments. In fact, this was part of our original intention for the book - Ian and I had conducted one very long discussion, often including other colleagues and students, through the quarter-century that we worked together. Our initial thought was that we might actually emphasize our differences in this book and continue the debate in print. In the end, the book took the form of something closer to a conventional textbook than either of us had intended. If this new edition takes us back in this respect to something more like the original intentions of its authors, then the only sadness is that Ian is no longer around to add his characteristically pithy and insightful rejoinders. That said, enough of Ian remains in my head for me to hear him chortle a witty demolition.I have also taken the liberty of responding to one of the reviewers of the first edition. Garry Potter (2002), in a very generous set of comments, argues for a rather different pedagogy. Maybe Ian and I were too scrupulous in being fair to the various positions we discussed - perhaps we should have made it clearer where we thought the arguments were more convincing? Should we have ‘come out' more with our own (albeit provisional) intellectual positions? Of course, I cannot speak for Ian (though his contribution to Appendix I should give some illumination), but hopefully my own sympathies will be more evident in the new ‘Commentary on Recent Developments’. However, despite their more ‘committed’ character, these notes are intended to retain the careful and respectful attitude to alternative points of view which (I hope) were a feature of the first edition. Partly because of its more committed nature, the new ‘commentary’ section will probably be experienced as more demanding in its level.
New readers might be advised to read the relevant sections of the main text before turning to the new material.In sum, this new edition includes brief updates on the state of debate on the topics covered in most chapters. These updates are added as postscripts to the relevant chapters. There is a more extended review and critical commentary on what has seemed to me the more significant of the additions to the literature since Ian and I wrote the book. This new ‘Commentary on Recent Developments’ includes a detailed engagement with a recent book staunchly defending the work of Peter Winch that allows me to take the discussion of Winch’s work rather further than Ian does in his Chapter 6. It also includes a discussion of an important development among the ‘posts’ in the shape of post-Marxist discourse theory, together with an overview of the great recent proliferation of work in the critical realist tradition.
This new edition also includes a slightly modified version of an obituary for Ian that I wrote for publication in the journal Radical Philosophy. Finally, I have included a chapter originally prepared for, but not published in, the first edition. Ian and I both felt that it would help readers to make sense of the selection of topics and arguments used in the book if we owned up to our own personal intellectual (and political) journeys. We accepted the advice of readers not to include it at that time, but the lapse of time since we wrote it has made it seem more appropriate for this second edition. The insights Ian gave into his own intellectual biography may be of particular interest.
Finally, many new works are included in the updated bibliography.
Ted Benton