The metaphysics of the social world Book

In this famous essay, the biggest Wittgenstein Stan attempts to show that social relations really exist only in and through the symbolic ideas of a contemporary society or better, that social relations fall into the same logical category as do relation between ideas than that of empirically conceived concepts as in Natural Sciences and thereby making a claim that social relations must be an equally unsuitable subject for generalizations and theories of the scientific sort to be formulated about them.

Lot of case studies from Hume, J.S. Mill, Durkheim, Weber, Pareto, Popper, Frazer and Malinowski. Some he praised and bashed while other he only bashed. Written at an important times when scholars of social sciences were aiming to set its status as close to Natural Sciences, it has sound arguments. But not very engaging however and that's a problem with analytical philosophers. More like they show how everything is more mechanised even the things we consider as full of humane emotions. If you ever want disillusionment from reading too much continental philosophy, books like these can help, I guess?

Thus understanding human society is closely connected with the activities of the underdog philosophers more than that of sociologists or any social scientists.

The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy (1958) ~ Peter Winch