Why are a wide range of problems increasing throughout the world at this time in history? Einstein claimed that the unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe. The current worldwide economic crisis indicates that we are experiencing highly threatening problems in addition to nuclear Armageddon that we fail to understand.Following Einstein s implicit suggestion, we require nothing less than changing our modes of thinking. This is what Phillips and Christner point toward in tackling our fundamental assumptions or metaphysical stance. They see our bureaucratic way of life as much of the basis for escalating problems. Yet fully half of the book is devoted to presenting an alternative: an evolutionary worldview and way of life. They build on our two most powerful tools, presently used only to a limited extent: language and the scientific method. By so doing, they contrast our present outward perception and thought, emotional repression, and conforming behavior with inward-outward perception and thought, emotional expression, and deep action and interaction. This alternative is linked to evolutionary social structures such as deep dialogue, deep democracy, and institutions that confront their problems ever more effectively. They presents a worldview coupled with a strategy for moving toward it based on realism no less than idealism, or the glass half empty as well as the glass half full.Saving Society addresses our escalating social problems by building on key ideas from recent books of the Sociological Imagination Group, including "Beyond Sociology s Tower of Babel" (2001), "Toward a Sociological Imagination" (2002), "The Invisible Crisis of Contemporary Society" (2007), "Understanding Terrorism" (2007), "Armageddon or Evolution?" (2009) and "Bureaucratic Culture and Escalating Problems" (2009). It makes use of language s dichotomous, gradational, and metaphorical potentials coupled with a broad and systematic approach to the scientific method, presenting an image of the future for the individual no less than for society."

Revolution in the Social Sciences centers on integrating knowledge from sociology, psychology, anthropology, history, political science and economics in order to confront increasing worldwide problems that threaten all of us. That integration of knowledge of human behavior is essential for understanding those problems, given their enormous complexity coupled with the highly specialized nature of the social sciences and their limited communication across specialized fields. It carries further the ideas developed by the Sociological Imagination Group in the seven books it has published since its founding in 2000 (www.sociological-imagination.org): Beyond Sociology's Tower of Babel, Toward a Sociological Imagination, The Invisible Crisis of Contemporary Society, Understanding Terrorism, Armageddon or Evolution? Bureaucratic Culture and Escalating World Problems, and Saving Society. In addition to visible problems like war and terrorism with weapons of mass destruction that are becoming ever more threatening, there are relatively invisible problems. For example, there is an increasing gap between what people throughout the world want including a decent standard of living and freedom from patterns of hatred like racism, sexism and ageism and what they are in fact able to get. There is, then, an increasing aspirations-fulfillment gap, largely produced by the "revolution of rising expectations" over the past five centuries. Political leaders who attempt to confront problems can only make limited progress on them, largely because of the failure of social scientists to integrate their knowledge and thus yield the understanding of these complex problems that is required.