The reviewers responses speak for themselves

The only account of how the social sciences came into being, why they differ

This book is about what modern social science is and how it came to be what it is. The ideas that we carry around with us have their own history, and his book tells us where these ideas came from.' - James M. Buchanan, George Mason University and Nobel Laureate in Economics

`Professor Gordon has created a work of rare authority in this riveting and beautifully written history of the social sciences. The book is at once scholarly and popular.' - Mark Blaug

`This is a major work which is set to become a classic. Scott Gordon has written what is not only a scholarly and extremely useful survey of the development of ideas in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to the present day, but also a thoroughly engaging and enjoyable book.' - The Economic Journal