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NONTHEMATIC / Vol. 26, No. 4 (Winter 1959)


In the discipline of economics the nature and the source of theory are not very generally understood--nor, by the same measure, are the roles of applied logic and mathematics. Economic theory, logical systems, and mathematical systems are again and again confused with one another in all their aspects--their natures, origins, and functions.

In 1955, after the British Labour Party had suffered a surprising defeat at the hands of the Conservatives, and when the postwar surge of leftist strength seemed definitely to be ebbing, Eric Sevareid asked 'Is European Socialism Dead?' and answered with an affirmative only barely qualified."

In the sociology of religion there is a gap between two different types of studies: on the one hand, the functional theories of religion, based primarily on ethnographic material, and large-scale institutional-historical investigations; and, on the other hand, the accumulation of descriptive-statistical material on the parochial level."

It is indicative of the profound personality of Alexis de Tocqueville that he and his work have gained in stature and relevance since his death in 1859. In 1959 we remember Tocqueville as a philosopher of freedom and as a human being who established as image of human integrity in an age of revolution.

To do justice to the work of Alfred Schutz the thinker and scholar is impossible in the scope of a brief homage, and well-nigh impossible in any one frame, for it stretches beyond the particular boundaries and in its many facets taxes the competence of experts in several fields.

When G.D.H. Cole, Oxford University economist and distinguished Guild Socialist, visited the United States in 1958 for the first and last time, he expressed the hope that he would be able to carry his monumental work, A History of Socialist Thought, to the end of World War II.

Review of book by Edward S. Mason. New York: Fordham University Press. 1959. 87 pp.

Review of book by William A. Hance. New York: Harper. 1958. 307 pp.

Review of book by Albert Mayer in collaboration with McKim Marriott and Richard L. Park, with foreword by Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant. Berkeley: U. of Cal. Press. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1958. 367 pp.

Review of book by Richard A Lester. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1958. 171 pp.

Review of book by Helene Maxwell Hooker. New York: New York University Press. 1958. 305 pp.

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