This book began as a revision of a book I published in 1989, Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences. It ended up as a quite different and more ambitious kind of book. It covers a much greater variety of topics, in considerably more detail, and in a different spirit. Although nine chapters have the same headings as chapters in the earlier book, only Chapter 9 and Chapter 24 remain substantially the same.

Although comprehensive in scope, the book is not a treatise. It is both less and more than that. It is an elementary, informal, and personal presentation of ideas that have, I believe, considerable potential for illuminating social behavior. I use plenty of examples, many of them anecdotal or literary, others drawn from more systematic studies. The very occasional use of algebra does not go beyond high school level. At the same time, the book has a methodological and philosophical slant not usual in introductory-level presentations. There is an effort to place the social sciences within the sciences more generally – the natural sciences as well as the humanities. There is also an effort to make the reader keep constantly in mind how general principles of scientific explanation constrain the construction of theories with explanatory pretensions.