Sitemap - 2023 - Social Science Files

Exhibit: Identity in the West’s 2nd empire

Exhibit: Roman Empire to Breakup

Type 4 Signed Sealed Disbursed

Type 4 Signed Sealed Delivered

'Just War' versus 'Primitive Pacifism'

Borders help bond and bind ... the BBB

A capitalist who fights back ...

The bourgeoisie is educated by its enemies

A Schumpeterian overture to Uruk

Welfare State Santa, the wisdom of Holman, the rape of the Israeli women

Reformat universities for the defence of civilisation

Surplus value, ‘extra something’

Exploited Waters

Standardisation in Mesopotamia

The Big Leap

Property, Enterprise, Private-Public

Rationalism in the Neolithic Interlude

Core analysis: The Template

Temple directors were Accountants not Priests

Nine hypotheses for 6000-1800 BC

Analysis: Before administration

Exhibit: Central functions, Mesopotamia

Exhibit: Why Write? to administer

Assumptions: Administration & Organisation

Staging post, landing stage

Exhibit: Hunter-gatherers Syria

Exhibit: Egypt exclusion & integration

Mesoamerica, collective action, no evidence

Economic Compulsions, city states

6000 years of Patrimonial States: Then, Now

Anarchy vs Hierarchy

First States in History

When Rome's system falls apart: the repersonalisation

The double-ethic in transitions to market

The big transition: custom-to-convention-to-law

Social science of rules of the game for skat law

Two Consuls and a Client (three men in a boat)

[Repost +] An uncontrolled Administrative State throws the separation of powers out of kilter

The Roman Republic as System

Rome and participatory differentiation

Were the powers separated in Rome?

My illustrated theory of Political Pi π

The Calculation

A Society of Three? Archaic pros and cons of remaining small..

Uncultured Fitness Utilities: A minimalist perspective on survivable equilibrium with bounty and adversity

Individual Differentiation

First few million years: hominins cognition-imagination, worldly-unworldly, time allocation calculations, solution-seeking, territoriality, layers of interaction, functionally equivalent bonding forms

Our Ancestors’ societies were Divided & Ruled by personality, intelligence, sex, age, physique, but they lacked 3rd party mediation by gods, and chiefs, and kings, and big brains [on Coronation Day]

Spencer sums up his vision of the evolution of society as a thing governed in differentiated i.e. "compounded" forms, except for "the horde" which he thinks is the original undifferentiated unit..

More on Chimpanzee Politics by Christopher Boehm: political intelligence, individualistic upward mobility [my question: too 'differentiated' to have evolved into an 'undifferentiated' human 'horde'?]

Sham Governance: shamanistic male control over non-egalitarian hunter gatherer societies, in breakthrough 1996 chapter by Stephen Shennan

'Machiavellian Intelligence II': Language is a tool for making tools for thinking and acting with, therefore Roles and Rules appeared with early proto-language: by Esther N. Goody

'Picturing' life in the primordial society of 'individual differentiation' through William Golding's novel, The Inheritors

Part 1 of Spencer’s write-ups of nineteenth century worldwide ethnographic accounts of male-female and household & family relations among relatively ‘pristine’ hunter-gatherer societies...

On the Law of the Household: The Principles Used by Parents in Disciplining Their Children, by Steven Shavell

Michael Mendle, Sovereignty and the Separation of Powers on the Eve of the English Civil War

England's Seventeenth Century Difficulty of Double Contingency

An Overview of Past and Future Code Praxis, and England's role

'Code' made concrete alongside Rationality, Governance, and Social Order

Social Science Proposal

Beginnings — The Individual Differentiation and the Smallest Society, by Michael G. Heller

Part 2 of A Crisis in the Neolithic, by Robin Dunbar [Monotheism and the Axial Age]

Automated Discretion in public bureaucracies, by Zouridis, van Eck, and Bovens [AI Why, why not]

Part 1 of A Crisis in the Neolithic, by Robin Dunbar [WHY Religion Evolved]

The Principles of Contradiction, Sufficient Reason, and Identity of Indiscernibles, by Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra

The Art of Discretion ... in the public service professions, by Tony Evans

The Origins of Symbolic Number, by David M. O’Shaughnessy, Edward Gibson, Steven T. Piantadosi

Language, procedures, and the non-perceptual origin of number word meanings, by David Barner

A Brain for Numbers: The Biology of the Number Instinct, by Andreas Nieder

By Anthony Kenny, JOHN HENRY NEWMAN: Part 2 of Three Modern Masters, in An Illustrated Brief History of Western Philosophy [plus my uncle Ambrose whose Assent was not sought]

By Michael Heller, The Asian Financial Crisis and the nature of East Asian political economies

War before Civilization, by Lawrence H. Keeley

Three masters of philosophy who were not philosophers [Darwin, Newman, Freud] in Anthony Kenny's An Illustrated Brief History of Western Philosophy.. [Part 1]

The Social Role of Inhibition in Primates and Other Animals, by Robin Dunbar & Susanne Shultz

Democritus & the Atomists, by Anthony Kenny, Illustrated Brief History of Western Philosophy

Leibniz, by Anthony Kenny, in his Illustrated Brief History of Western Philosophy

The Palace, in The Types of Regime, by Samuel Finer [his 'History of Government'; our Part 6]

The Typology of Regimes, by Samuel Finer [his 'History of Government'; our series Part 5]

Urbanization, State Formation, and Cooperation, by Justin Jennings and Timothy Earle: Case study extracts and Conclusion..

Archaeology as a Social Science, by Michael Smith, Gary Feinman, Robert Drennan, Timothy Earle, and Ian Morris [2012]

Robin Dunbar, Free Will? What’s complicated about social life?, Have societies evolved?, in his Evolution: What Everyone Needs to Know

Niklas Luhmann, Differentiation, in Theory of Society

Anthony Giddens, Evolution and History, in The Constitution of Society

Robin Dunbar, Human Evolution: Why so many social layers?

Robin Dunbar, Structural and Cognitive Solutions to Prevent Group Fragmentation in Group-Living Species

Smith and Szathmary, The Major Transitions in Evolution

Method for study in a History of Society

The new 2023 Social Science Files Project

Herbert Spencer, The Regulating System of Society: 19th century anthropological evidence (more pristine?), role of war, centralisation, cerebrum, medieval & modern parallels.

How I Define Society

Fact: Many of the world’s leading social scientists like to read Social Science Files.

Herbert Spencer: The functions and systems of sustaining and distributing among competing organs of society

Herbert Spencer: Social Growth, and Social Structures

Herbert Spencer: The Primitive Theory of Things, and The Scope of Sociology

Herbert Spencer: Typologies of Primitive Ideas

Emile Durkheim, The Origin of the Notion of Totemic Principle, or Mana

Herbert Spencer: The most basic universal social phenomena affecting society’s evolution, and the external environment constraints opportunities.

Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method: key extracts from Preface, Introduction, Chapters 1-4

Schumpeter, Graeco-Roman Economics [Part 1]

Samuel Finer, History of Government, Conceptual Prologue [Parts 3 & 4]

Tim Ingold, The social relations of the hunter-gatherer band

Andrew Lintott, Constitution of Roman Republic

Max Weber, Objectivity in Social Science

B. Fagan & N. Durrani, World Prehistory: The Basics

D.L. Smith, Constitutional Royalism 1640–1649

J. Turner & A. Maryanski, Origin of Societies by Natural Selection

L. J. Reeve, Charles I Personal Rule

Capogrossi Colognesi, Law, Power, Roman Commonwealth [Part 2]

Andrew Lintott, Cicero as Evidence

Peter Brunt, Fall of the Roman Republic

Jeremy Waldron, Political Political Theory

Hansen, Athenian Democracy [Part 6]

Harriet I. Flower, Roman Republics

Mirko Canevaro, Majority Rule vs. Consensus

Hansen, Athenian Democracy [Part 5]

Valentina Arena, Libertas & Politics in the Late Roman Republic

Hansen, Athenian Democracy [Part 4]

Henrik Mouritsen, The Roman Republic

Hansen, Athenian Democracy [Part 3]

Hansen, Athenian Democracy [Part 2]

Hansen, Athenian Democracy [Part 1]

1st Anniversary of Social Science Files [11th Feb]

Elio Lo Cascio, Setting the Rules of the Game

Elio Lo Cascio, Setting the Rules of the Game

Walter Scheidel, Approaching the Roman Economy

Egbert Koops, Price Setting & Other Economic Controls in the Roman Economy

Colin Renfrew, Prehistory: The Making Of The Human Mind

Colin Renfrew, Prehistory: The Making Of The Human Mind

Colin Renfrew, Prehistory: The Making Of The Human Mind

Steven Lukes, Different cultures, different rationalities?

Marshall Sahlins, New Science of the Enchanted

Capogrossi Colognesi, Law, Power, Roman Commonwealth

Jon Elster, France, Unraveling of an Absolutist Regime

Steven Garfinkle, Ancient Near Eastern City-States

Anthony Kaldellis, Romanland

Francis Fukuyama on the War in Ukraine, Authoritarianism, and Liberal Democracy

Deirdre McCloskey, Fukuyama Was Correct

H&H Frankfort, The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man, Before Philosophy

Costambeys et al., The Carolingian world

Arif Ahmed, Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations

Jens Høyrup, Lengths, Widths, Surfaces in Old Babylonian Algebra

James C. Scott, State Simplification

David Lindberg, Beginnings of Western Science

Chris Wickham, Europe’s Long Economic Boom 950–1300

Philip Pettit, The State

Margaret Judson, Crisis of the English Constitution

Glenn Burgess, Review of Michael Mendle, Henry Parker & the English Civil War

Bernard Crick, In Defence of Politics

Francesca Rochberg, Science & Ancient Mesopotamia

Dennis Kehoe, Land Tenure and Agricultural Regulation in Roman Law