Synopses & Reviews
Review
"There's nothing quite like the fun of good, old-fashioned muckraking; and how much greater the fun when it is a distinguished senior psychologist who tells us that 30 years of work in cognitive psychology, and 60 years of work in social psychology, have been—the word is Deese's— 'worthless.' Deese starts from the perception that the determinism of modern social scientists is at odds with the principles on which democracy is founded and proceeds to a critique of psychological determinism as it has cropped up in behaviorism, social psychology, psychohistory, and anthropology. Elegantly managed examples—and delicious demolitions of modern text-books— accompany a simply stated but quite cogent philosophical critique of all who pretend to give causal explanations of human action, and of all who do so in the name of 'science.' Deese ends with a compelling defense of a view that perhaps only a handful of older writers (such as Brand Blanshard) are now willing to hold, that reason itself is sometimes our motivation in what we do. Taking timely current examples, Deese has written a delightful defense of some very old principles; his books should go on our shelves beside Morgenthau on statistics and Andrevsky on The Social Sciences as Sorcery." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)