The following book is a collection of essays written by Thorstein Veblen. He was a Norwegian-American economist and sociologist who, during his lifetime, emerged as a well-known critic of capitalism. There are sixteen essays published in this book, some of the bearing these titles: 'The Place of Science in Modern Civilisation', 'The Preconceptions of Economic Science', 'Gustav Schmoller's Economics', 'Industrial and Pecuniary Employments', 'The Socialist Economics of Karl Marx', and 'An Early Experiment in Trusts'.

Talcott Parsons (1904-79) is widely regarded as one of the most important sociologists of the twentieth century. These four volumes provide an essential guide to the thought and work of this major sociologist.

Contemporary economics is characterized by a mismatch between its methods of analysis and the nature of the world it seeks to interpret. Despite regular economic crises and ongoing critique of the discipline, the drift from political economy into applied mathematics appears to continue unabated. In this book, Tony Lawson advocates a relignment of economics with social reality. In analyzing mainstream economists' misplaced universality, the author places ontology at the heart of a reoriented future in which economics is integrated within the wider human and social sciences.

Although Veblen, Dewey, and Mills disagreed on a number of points, Rick Tilman shows how these thinkers forged an authentic, coherent, and original tradition of critical social science in the United States. By comparing their views on a number of timely issues such as aesthetics, feminism, and gambling, the author shows how their tradition is vibrantly relevant in the new millenium.

'While there is growing recognition that understanding knowledge is at the very heart of economics, little work has thus far been forthcoming representing in a comprehensive and coherent way its fundamental nature and wide-ranging consequences for economic analysis. The editors are to be commended for having filled this critical gap by providing a well-organized collection of outstanding contributions. This rich and greatly needed Handbook is comprised of contributions about the role knowledge plays in the history of the discipline as well as the most significant current developments as we witness them, particularly in the branches of evolutionary, institutional and complexity economics.' – Kurt Dopfer, University of St Gallen, Switzerland Why do societies benefit differently from knowledge? How exactly does social interaction interfere with knowledge acquisition and diffusion? This original Handbook brings together a wide range of differing approaches to shed light on these questions and others relating to the role and relevance of knowledge in economic analysis. By illuminating the philosophical roots of the various notions of knowledge employed by economists, this Handbook helps to disentangle conceptual and typological issues surrounding the debate on knowledge among economists. Wide-ranging in scope, it explores fundamental aspects of the relationship between knowledge and economics – such as the nature of knowledge, knowledge acquisition and knowledge diffusion. This important compendium embraces various fields and traditions of economic analysis and discusses the role of knowledge in 21 papers from outstanding international scholars. Advanced scholars and postgraduate students interested in cross-fertilization between different fields of economic analysis will find this Handbook of considerable importance.

"Tilman argues that evolutionary naturalism provides the philosophical foundations of Veblen's thought. He links evolutionary naturalism to Veblen's aesthetics, secular humanism, sociology of control, sociobiology, and sociology of knowledge, thereby initiating observations regarding the relationship of Veblen's own life to his thinking and his place as a cultural lag theorist"--Provided by publisher.