Nature of Social Science

A discussion of the social sciences and of their relation to the physical and biological sciences. Homans believes that these all form a single science, sharing the same subject and explanatory principles.

George Caspar Homans (1910-1989) an American sociologist, was a leading theorist in developing testable hypotheses and explanations about fundamental social processes in small groups.

George Homans was born August 11, 1910, in Boston, Massachusetts, the eldest child of Robert Homans, a lawyer and a fellow of Harvard Corporation, and of Abigail Adams Homans, a descendant of President John Adams. He married Nancy Parshall Cooper in 1941.

Homans' books included an Introduction to Pareto: His Sociology, with C. P. Curtis (1934); English Villagers of the Thirteenth Century (1941); The Human Group (1950); Marriage, Authority and Final Causes, with D. M. Schneider (1955); Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms (1961, 1974); Sentiments and Activities (1962); The Nature of Social Science (1967); Coming to My Senses: the Autobiography of a Sociologist (1984).