Is Social Science Possible? [Audio]

LSE Podcasts

Speaker(s): Professor Daniel M. Hausman | Using economics as an example, this lecture addresses a perennial philosophical question that also occupied Auguste Comte: can inquiries into social phenomena be sciences? This talk is the Auguste Comte Memorial Lecture. Daniel M. Hausman is the Herbert A. Simon and Hilldale Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A founding editor of the journal, Economics and Philosophy, his research has centered on epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical issues lying at the boundaries between economics and philosophy. An assistant professor at the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at the LSE, Johanna Thoma’s main research is in practical rationality and decision theory. She is particularly interested in questions of rationality over time, and in the context of uncertainty. She also works on ethics and the philosophy of science, in particular the philosophy of social science and economics. The Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method (@LSEPhilosophy) at LSE was founded by Professor Sir Karl Popper in 1946, and remains internationally renowned for a type of philosophy that is both continuous with the sciences and socially relevant.