Search

The relations between George Herbert Mead's pragmatism and Wilhelm Dilthey's hermeneutics have been examined in recent years in a new light: based on the former's close contact with the latter during the course of his studies in Germany in the 1880s–90s. These relations seem to vanish afterward, with Mead's return to the United States. Yet the common interests they share in the formation of a new social science keeps their respective developments in parallel; from psychology to history, they both share common interests in the reformulation of the concepts of Geist or Mind of the Hegelian legacy, through an interest in meaning and symbols as keys to the interpretation of the social world. Although there are important differences in their evaluation of the definition of the scientific enterprise that keeps natural sciences and Geisteswissenschaften apart for Dilthey, but are rather seen in their continuity for Mead, there are numerous points of intersection in their views. This article seeks to highlight those similarities, without neglecting the differences between Mead and Dilthey, in order to bring hermeneutics and pragmatism closer in their capacity to shed light on each other, and on the requirements of sociological analysis in contemporary society to be widened and deepened by adding the psychological and historical dimensions to its perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Behavioral sociology has developed unique features which have caused controversy and confusion in the discipline. In this paper, we briefly describe the history of behavioral sociology, and show how its major forms have been applied to behavioral analysts in complex organizations, laboratory experimental analysis of social exchange and social process, and behavioral macrosociology and theoretical extensions We also briefly examine criticisms of behavioral sociology on grounds of tautology, reduction, the omission of internal states as relevant data, and behavior control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]