Goldthorpe reveals the genealogy of present-day sociological science through studies of the key contributions made by seventeen pioneers in the field, ranging from John Graunt and Edmond Halley in the mid-seventeenth century to Otis Dudley Duncan, James Coleman and Raymond Boudon in the late twentieth. Goldthorpe's biographies of these figures and analyses of their work reveal clear lines of intellectual descent, building towards the author's model of sociology as the study of human populations across time and place, previously outlined in his book Sociology as a Population Science (Cambridge, 2015). The extent to which recent developments such as computational sociology and analytical sociology are in continuation with the efforts of these influential thinkers is also critically examined. Pioneers of Sociological Science will appeal to students and scholars of sociology and to anyone engaged in social science research, from statisticians to social historians.

‘John Goldthorpe's earlier work such as On Sociology and Sociology as a Population Science has contributed in lucid and seminal ways to the integration of empirical research and theory formation in sociology, convincingly showing, too, that sociological theory, adequately conceived, differs very much from second-hand history of ideas. His new book Pioneers of Sociological Science, provocative and vintage Goldthorpe in its clarity, is a major contribution to the genealogy of sociology as a population science. Providing a critical account of the ideas of pioneers, the book shows how core principles of sociology as an empirically and theoretically informed discipline have been shaped.'

Werner Raub - Professor of Sociology, Utrecht University