This is a review of the historical development of the social sciences from their beginnings in Renaissance Italy to the present day. The author examines the problems that the great thinkers have confronted in their attempts to construct systematic theories of social phenomena. At the same time, he offers a survey of the major writers in the fields of economics, sociology and political science. Separate chapters are devoted to particular topics of special significance such as the nature of sociality, the idea of harmonious order, the conflict between progress and perfection, the methodology of history, and the relation between biology and the social sciences. There is an examination of the main lines of thought that have developed in the philosophy of science since the breakdown of logical empiricism and the author shows how the scientific investigation of social phenomena differs from the methodologies of the physical and biological sciences.