Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences

by Jon Elster

This book is intended as an introductory survey of the philosophy of the social sciences. It is essentially a work of exposition that offers a tool box of mechanisms--nuts and bolts, cogs and wheels--that can be used to explain complex social phenomena. Within a brief compass, Jon Elster covers a vast range of topics. His point of departure is the conflict we all face between our desires and our opportunities. How can rational choice theory help us understand our motivation and behavior? More significantly, what happens when the theory breaks down but we still cleave to a belief in the power of the rational? Elster describes the fascinating range of forms of irrationality--wishful thinking, the phenomenon of sour grapes, discounting the future in non-cooperative behavior. He shows how these issues bear directly on our lives in such concrete situations as wage bargaining, economic cartels, political strikes, voting in elections, and court decisions involving child custody.

Genres: Sociology, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Politics, Economics, Social Science, Reference

194 pages, Paperback

Published July 28, 1989

About the author

Jon Elster ، born 22 February 1940, Oslo) is a Norwegian social and political theorist who has authored works in the philosophy of social science and rational choice theory. He is also a notable proponent of analytical Marxism, and a critic of neoclassical economics and public choice theory, largely on behavioral and psychological grounds.

In 2016, he was awarded the 22nd Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science for his contributions to political science.

Reviews

[Peter Toth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this book on the day of 2004/03/18, while I was attending my first year at BKÁE as the receipt I found inside indicates. The name of the university changed during my tenure to Corvinus at some point. This must have been for one of the first-year classes of either sociology or something similar in nature. "The nuts and bolts of society" is a thought experiment, trying to prove that how a society evolves, what collective decisions are made, can be modelled after how individuals make their decisions. The author goes through a number of aspects of this question from desires and norms of individuals to institutions in a state, and how these can be used to model how a society functions in reality.

I had a distinct feeling throughout the book that while there are numerous theories, neither survives the first contact with actually what society is and how it functions, not to mention every single society is unique and different from every other. I think somewhere the author also states that he does not want to prove, rather pull a bunch of ideas together that tries to further research and the theory of social sciences in general. I'm not convinced such models can ever get close to reality, no matter how much time scientists spend with it.

Asimov's Hari Seldon came to mind a few times, being the pivotal figure in science fiction who achieved something like this with his "psychohistory", upon which the whole concept of the 'Foundation' series is based. This pretty much sums up my view of this, achieving an all-encompassing model on how societies work belongs to science fiction. There might be sub-areas that can succeed in modelling and perhaps predicting how parts of a theoretical society will function and what collective decisions might be made, but simply knowing that such a model exists would cause certain actors to try and fool it. I'm not sure how artifical intelligence will impact this thinking in the upcoming decades, but for now this book can be considered a tableau of thoughts that is like the very first chapter in a long journey of social sciences for the future which might or might not achieve anything in the end. We literally make or break our societies ourselves and the way the world has been going in the past few years, we might experience again how civilization died with Rome only to slowly rebuild again to something new. In this sense, Asimov also clearly sensed this 'zeitgeist' in 'Foundation' that something is certainly off with the world. Whether we will now see a period of three thousand years of civilizational darkness, is still to be decided, but it's up to us, living now to make a difference and hope we will avoid the worst.

[sube · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent introduction to a sociology premised upon methodological individualism. The core argument is a critique of functionalism, i.e. explaining an event or structure with its outcome. He explains well that how in, say, the argument that people engaged in rain dances due to increasing social cohesion ignored that it does not actually explain anything, but only offer a weak correlation.

Instead, he argues, explanations must be grounded in mechanisms that can only be through the actions of individuals, as they are the only entities actually able to 'act' in a strict sense in his view.

He discusses a variety of mechanisms (rational choice, selection, emotion, reinforcement) and applies them to a variety of structural phenomena, and also discusses well the limits of each mechanism as explanatory tell and especially has an useful critique of trying to apply natural selection to social life as an social mechanism as being usually incoherent.

It is very cursory and introductory, but still very thought-provoking read that helps with sharper thinking - with my main question how his methodological individualism could make one be able to talk about social entities like the "state" at all, yet a more minimalist formulation seems to conform his introduction of being "trivially true".

[emily]

the introduction to this was maybe the most confusing thing i’ve ever read and sent me on a im doing the wrong degree spiral but this is good (and understandable)
had come across most of this stuff before in some of the reading i did for my personal statement and sometimes i found myself skimming when it got to game theory etc etc but i love thinking about why people act the way they do (and why the action often seems irrational)
one thing i didn’t understand was the author asserting that cooperation for a common good is irrational because it is in our self interest to be non-cooperative even when lots of people cooperating brings about the best result - to me a rational actor would realise that 1, cooperation is more beneficial than unilateral action and 2, other rational people would also come to that conclusion and so the rational thing to do would be to cooperate

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Philosophy of social science primer. Superior.

[Octavia Cade · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title made me interested in this, and it seemed a good idea: short, introductory-level chapters on the basic elements of the social science. It'll be interesting, I thought. I'll learn something. Well, it wasn't and I didn't, much. The idea is still good, but it wasn't that introductory and the examples ranged from accessible to incomprehensible. It wasn't helped by a series of utterly useless diagrams - or at least I found them useless.

I tend to read more popular science than popular social science, but even so: there have to be more compelling examples of the latter than this.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good and sober introduction to social sciences, with neither grand claims nor intricate narratives to explain social phenomena. The author relies instead on a more case-to-case basis, using simpler mechanisms. Probably many criticisms can and have been raised, but it is a good starting point to think about these subjects.

[Pixie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Shallow and lousy written. Avoid if you can.