What if we recognized that the human sciences collectively investigate a few dozen key phenomena that interact with each other? Can we imagine a human science that would seek to stitch its understandings of this system of phenomena into a coherent whole? If so, what would that look like?
This book argues that we are unlikely to develop one unified "theory of everything." Our collective understanding must then be a "map" of the myriad relationships within this large - but finite and manageable - system, coupled with detailed understandings of each causal link and of important subsystems. The book outlines such a map and shows that the pursuit of coherence - and a more successful human science enterprise - requires integration, recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of different methods and theory types, and the pursuit of terminological and presentational clarity. It explores how these inter-connected goals can be achieved in research, teaching, library classification, publi
