ABSTRACT
The primary purpose of Metaphor and History is to explain the sources and contexts of the Western idea of social development. Nisbet explores the concept of social change across the whole range of Western culture, from ancient Greece to the present day. He does not see the idea of social development as a nineteenth-century phenomenon or a by-product of the idea of biological evolution.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part |11 pages
Social Change and History
part I|124 pages
Civilization as Growth in Time: The Biography of a Metaphor
part II|72 pages
The Theory of Social Development
part III|96 pages
Persistence and Change