As a paper format reference work, the two-volume Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Social Sciences (EPSS) only takes up three inches of shelf space, but it does provide an impressive range of essays. The goal is “to convey a clear sense of how philosophy looks at the social sciences and to mark out a detailed picture of how exactly the two are interrelated, interwoven at certain times but also differentiated and contrasted at others” (xxix). Thus the EPSS’s aim varies, for example, from the more discipline-focused goals of the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Borchert (Macmillan, 2006), and Darity’s International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (IESS) (Macmillan, 2008).

As might be expected readers find topics related to disciplines like anthropology, political science, economics, geography, law, psychology, and sociology. The EPSS entries address broad substantive categories such as “Emotions,” “Intelligence,” and “Free Will,” other topics like “Falsifiability” and “Explanation, theories of,” and narrower topics like the “Marxist Economics” and “Luhman’s Social Theory.” Along with the goals of individual entries, the multi-perspectival approach is also facilitated by the first volume’s readers’ guide with entries listed under broad, expected headings such as “Philosophy and History,” “Philosophy and Economics,” and others such as “Feminism and Social Science,” and “Biology and Social Science.”

Each entry includes a basic overview of the topic and includes the views of key scholars on that topic. The related lists of further readings are helpful and support follow up study. The overviews contain brief, accessible content both for undergraduate and graduate students and for other academically inclined readers.

The breadth of this two-volume resource is significant, but organization choices are necessary. So, while there is no general entry for “Morality,” as there is in the Darity resource, related entries include “Moral Cognitivism,” “Social Norms,” “Normativism Versus Realism,” and “Collective Values.” An index is in the back of the second volume, and it shows numerous discussions that include moral issues and factors, including one on “Neuroethics” where, along with neuroscience, ethicists are looking to the social sciences.

For those who seek discussion and beginning guidance on topics at the interface of philosophy and the social sciences, the EPSS can be used alone or as a supplement to other sources. So for example, related coverage for the topic “Behaviorism” is found in Ramachandran’s Encyclopedia of Human Behavior (Elsevier, 2012), as well as in the Darity and Borchert resources. From the field of philosophy, the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (plato.stanford.edu), edited by Zalta, has more extensive (and possibly more demanding) reading with longer reference lists, and plans for ongoing updates. Even so, the EPSS entry for “Action” has many solid, current references that were not found in either Borchert or Zalta.

In sum, both for those with basic resources (Borchert) and for those without, the contents of EPSS bring valuable contributions to the table. As noted, the essays are deliberately constructed to include and interactively engage perspectives from philosophy and the social sciences. For a range of uses the EPSS can be recommended as support for those who teach and pursue study on topics in philosophy and the social sciences, for all college and university settings, and possibly for large public libraries.